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By The Huffington Post News Editors

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama assured House Democrats Thursday he won’t slash Social Security and Medicare, moments after he reaffirmed his commitment to entitlement reform in a meeting with Senate Republicans.

Obama sat down with Democrats in late afternoon, just after he emerged from a 90-minute face-to-face with Republicans in the upper chamber, where his willingness to cut entitlement spending dominated the conversation. House Democrats hadn’t seen the reports of what Obama discussed with the Senate GOP — they were reacting instead, they told reporters after the meeting, to reports about the president restating his support for a grand bargain with Republicans that includes so-called chained CPI and other cuts to Medicare.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Mich.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was first to ask Obama about chained CPI, a way of calculating the consumer price index that would decrease monthly payments to Social Security recipients. Ellison, one of the strongest opponents of the Social Security benefit cut, was soon joined by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who also expressed concerns to the president.

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

WASHINGTON — Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) released a budget plan Tuesday to great fanfare and media attention, though it has zero chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate and being signed into law by President Barack Obama. Much less attention is being given to a proposal put forward Wednesday with just as much, or little, chance of becoming law — the budget from the House’s Congressional Progressive Caucus.

That budget, titled “Back to Work,” offers a list of progressive priorities — a public option for health care, negotiation of Medicare drug prices, a carbon tax, defense cuts, a financial transactions tax, much higher marginal tax rates for millionaires and billionaires, capital gains taxed as ordinary income, and public works projects, among dozens of other ideas.

Yet some of the proposals from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is co-chaired by Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), might garner bipartisan support. Exxon Mobil’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, has praised the idea of a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade system. Capital gains rates — now at 20 percent and 25 percent (for income over $450,000) — were at maximum levels of almost 40 percent as late as the 1970s. The Earned Income Tax Credit, whose temporary expansion under the 2009 stimulus package the budget would extend, was proposed by the late conservative economist Milton Friedman.

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Progressives Unveil Budget Alternative To Paul Ryan Plan

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