voter id? sure. registration did cause a lot of problems. what happens is, if you think you registered, show up to the polling place and they don t find your name, that leads to a long line. a lot of people were disappointed. registration is too hard in this country. why are we doing that? it s archaic to have you go down to a particular agency and vote. and if you move, it doesn t move with you. we have to get to the point of modernizing registration. the problem that we have is when we do that, we are doing what we should be doing, which is making free fair and accessible elections. not all politicians want everyone to vote. so, that s going to be the obstacle. richard, i want to go to you on that. states have fewer resources in the federal government. in some cases there are officials that have a partisan interest in making it harder to
candidate he made in 1998 when he said james hormel was openly gay. hormel said he accepted the apology. chuck hagel hasn t been selected yet. given what happened to ambassador rice, the question becomes will the president get the cabinet he wants or settle for the cabinet he can get confirm? richard, bob, lizz and raul reyes. this is about chuck hagel and opti optics. it s the president putting one forward saying is this okay. when they say it s not okay, it pulls back. is that the problem here? it s what i think. chuck hagel needs to look back
communication strategy going forward. there s going to be a task force headed by the vice president. it s going to be public. probably books and more exploration of what happened on television in the media. what could the nra do now to help the damage? i think the strategy is going to be behind the scenes, pushing hard on republicans. it goes to what we talked about how the republicans have a mentality, it s all or nothing. they are going to play to that very hard. i think the way our system is right now, there s a good chance they will be successful. richard, you are pessimistic we could see. the other thing they propose, there isn t going to be a registry of people with mental illness. the worse isn t going to happen. whatever the majority of people think there could be a legislative solution to people getting these guns. james brady was shot in 1981. right. when did the brady bill pass?
offered no evidence it s a widespread problem. sadly, it could be an eternal series. the voter suppression is not over. south carolina and pennsylvania passed voter id laws that while suspended by judges for 2012 could impact elections next year. in some states like wisconsin and missouri, republicans are considering enshrining roader id laws in their constitutions. some want to fix voting problems, others think things are fixed just fine. back with my panel, richard kim, bob herbert, liz, author of liz free or die and raul reyes. let s go to washington, d.c. judy brown is co-director of the project. i want to start with you.
a minimum benefit for the poor. increased benefits for people over 85. on page 24 of their proposal was to go to cpi. the reason is that chained cpis are a more accurate measure. the cpi is based on an unrealistic measurement and it would result in a .3% reduction in the average benefit. that s the pushback. it accumulates over time. you are on the arc that goes like this. in the long term, it s a big reduction. but, you know, the problem with all of this is that social security is not the problem. that s the big issue. we don t need to discuss this to reduce the deaf. we need to talk the bush tax cuts. i know that s your issue. it s true. social security does not contribute to that. richard is so right. it should not be part of the discussion. the republicans have been on the march with social security since