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Axelrod fumbles: Obama doesn’t have a plan to save Social Security

In the usual conservative sanitary environment that is MSNBC, liberals can normally relax, knowing that they won’t be asked any difficult questions.  However, Time‘s Mark Halperin cordially asks David Axelrod about the President’s plan for Social Security, since he never mentioned it on 60 Minutes the night before …Axelrod begins to stutter…  HotAir.com reports on the conversation.  We’ve provided a snippet:

HALPERIN: “So what is his proposal?”

AXELROD: “Mark, I’ll tell you what, when you get elected to the United States Senate and sit at that table — this is not the time. We’re not going to have that discussion right now unless the Congress wants to sit at a table and says okay we’re ready to move on a balanced approach to this. The reality of Social Security is this is a much less imminent problem than Medicare. We have extended the life of Medicare for close to a decade through the changes that we’ve made and Governor Romney wants to repeal. But Social Security is a more distant problem. One that needs a solution. But it isn’t as pressing as a Medicare issue.”

That’s correct.  He said, ‘this is not the time.’  What do you mean, ‘this is not the time’?  You mean to tell me that Obama expects to campaign on the Pelosi-like plan of ‘elect me again, and then I’ll tell you what my plan is’?  And then he has the nerve to smugly condescend, saying, “Mark, I’ll tell you what, when you get elected to the United States Senate and sit at that table…”

No, Dave …I’ll tell you what… if the President doesn’t have a plan (even a half-baked one would be nice), then we’re going to get ourselves a new President.

Also, Ed Morrissey makes another good point:

Next, Axelrod admits that Medicare is a bigger problem.  That’s true, but that’s not been the position of the Obama administration.  They keep claiming that ObamaCare has fixed the problem in the short term and bent the cost curve downward over the long term.  Now Axelrod admits to reality, which is that ObamaCare didn’t help save Medicare at all — and that it’s on the same decade-long trajectory to collapse as it was when Obama took office.

What have we found out from today’s episode of Morning Joe?  Obama has wasted four years while the entitlement collapse continued to pick up steam, and even after four years, he still doesn’t have a plan to address it.

Well said, Ed.