THE WAR BUDGET IS BURNING DOWN OUR ECONOMY 8SEP11

CHECK out the campaign against the corrupting influence of the military-industrial complex. Click the links to see just how many jobs are lost with every billion dollars spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Click this link to go to warcost.com for more information...
http://warcosts.com/
Next Tuesday (13 SEP 11), military contractors plan to stage a "march to the Hill" to pressure Congress to protect their massive revenues from cuts by the new deficit committee and cash in on contractor contributions to committee members. We need your help to fight their influence.

By Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe

President Obama will talk jobs tonight. Good. That’s what we should have been talking about all year. Here’s all thirty-five words of our suggested script for the speech:

“Good evening. To get American working again, we must cut our massive war budget and find better ways to spend that money. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”

This would be by far the shortest presidential speech on jobs ever given, and one of the most effective plans given in years to get people back to work.
The simple truth is that, beyond war industry hype, military spending costs us jobs. According to the Political Economy Research Institute’s (PERI) 2009 study, when you compare it to other ways of spending the money, every $1 billion spent for military purposes costs us, at minimum, 3,222 jobs. At the upper end, war spending costs us 17,500 or more jobs per billion dollars. Military spending creates fewer jobs, both directly and indirectly, than every other kind of spending studied by PERI. So, given that we spend well in excess of $700 billion every year on war in this country, it’s fair to say that our obsession with war spending is sucking the life right out of our economy.
War spending is good at making a few corporations very rich at the expense of the rest of us, however. Take Lockheed Martin, for example. Lockheed is the top contractor for both the Pentagon (.pdf) and the U.S. government in general (.xls), having made $35.8 billion off the taxpayer in 2010. Just to put that in perspective, if they were an “official” arm of the U.S. government, their taxpayer-funded budget, ironically, would be roughly three times the size of the Department of Labor (.pdf). Their CEO, Robert J. Stevens, made $21.9 million dollars last year, or $10,527.80 per hour. That’s a pretty sweet deal for the head of a company whose two marquee products, the F-22 and the F-35, have yet to see action in a war-zone because they aren’t safe or don’t work.
While Lockheed Martin and their buddies in the war industry are rolling in the taxpayers’ dough, the rest of us are choking on the ashes of the economy. The unemployment rate in this country as usually quoted in the press exceeds 9 percent. But, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, real unemployment exceeds 16 percent and has remained relatively flat for at least a year. Last month, the economy created zero jobs. Given this very nasty employment picture, there’s absolutely no justification for maintaining what’s essentially a job-killing corporate welfare program for war profiteers.
By coincidence, President Obama’s jobs speech takes place on the same day as the first meeting of the new Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. If the members of the committee are serious about doing what’s best for this country, they’ll focus on changes to the budget that have a chance of getting people back to work. Serious cuts to the war budget should be at the top of their list.
War industry corporations like Lockheed Martin know that if Congress does zero in on job creation, their days of living high-on-the-hog may be over. They’ve banded together under the banner of a front group, “Second To None,” to pressure the committee and other influentials on the Hill to protect their profits. [See Nick Turse’s excellent piece on AlterNet today detailing just who is behind the Second To None effort.] They plan to stage a “march to the Hill” on Tuesday, and with members of the so-called “Super Committee” having taken well over a million dollars in campaign and PAC contributions from these war profiteers, there’s a real danger that Second To None could “cash in,” corrupting the process to shield their job-killing profits.
Brave New Foundation’s War Costs campaign is working to put Second To None on the defensive. That’s why we’re running a full-page ad in Politico on Monday to call out Second To None’s deceptive spin on jobs and to tell Congress we need jobs, not war industry profits that are killing our economy. Please consider joining our effort.

Follow the War Costs campaign on Facebook, and follow Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe on Twitter to stay updated about War Costs’ latest actions to expose the true costs of our nation’s obsession with war spending.

 

Tell Sens. Webb and Warner: Support the Social Security Protection Act of 2011. from CREDO 7MAR11

SIGN THE PETITION, POST TO YOUR FACEBOOK WALL AND SHARE WITH FAMILY, FRIENDS AND COWORKERS!!!!

Take Social Security off the chopping block. Clicking here will add your name to this petition to Sens. Webb and Warner: "Social Security is one of the most popular and most effective social programs in our country's history. We cannot allow its opponents to undermine it. Help take Social Security off the chopping block by co-sponsoring the Social Security Protection Act of 2011." Click here to add your name

We need to take Social Security off the table as a bargaining chip in talks about the budget deficit and federal spending.

Social Security is one of the greatest anti-poverty programs in our country's history and is wildly popular. In addition, despite fearmongering to the contrary, Social Security is currently running a surplus, is fully solvent for decades, and is prohibited by law from adding to the deficit.

In fact, the only crisis facing Social Security is caused by opponents of the program who are crying wolf about a crisis in order to justify undermining one of the most popular social programs in our history.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced a bill on Thursday called the Social Security Protection Act of 2011. The bill would take Social Security off the chopping block by requiring a two-thirds super majority to reduce benefits, raise the retirement age or privatize the program.

Tell Sens. Webb and Warner: Support the Social Security Protection Act of 2011. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Make no mistake, enemies of Social Security are trying to sabotage it even as they try to bamboozle the rest of us about their real aims. And we already know that some plan to use the prospect of a government shutdown or the fight around the debt ceiling as leverage to undermine Social Security.

We've seen how this works before. Time and again, conservatives have ginned up fake emergencies to justify far-reaching and deeply unpopular legislation. And all too often, we've seen Democrats in office do nothing to stop — or worse, actively enable — these conservative power-grabs.

We can't let this happen with Social Security, which for 75 years has withstood both the test of time and the active efforts to undercut it.

Tell Sens. Webb and Warner: Support the Social Security Protection Act of 2011. Click here to automatically sign the petition..

Ten senators are already co-sponsoring the Social Security Protection Act. As a number of the co-sponsors of the bill wrote in a Dear Colleague letter:

"Our legislation does not prohibit Congress from cutting Social Security benefits, raising the retirement age or privatizing this important program. It simply ensures that if Congress takes any of these actions, a super-majority vote is needed..."

This is precisely the type of leverage we'll need in the upcoming fights. It will help stop conservatives from ramming through cuts or privatization as some sort of grand compromise on "must pass" legislation.<

Once we do this, we banish the false specter of crisis, and have a real discussion about how to make changes to Social Security to keep it successful for another 75 years.

Thank you for standing up for Social Security.

Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

P.S. The co-sponsors for the Social Security Protection Act of 2011 are: Bernard Sanders (VT), Daniel Akaka (HI), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Sherrod Brown (OH), Barbara Mikulski (MD), Barbara Boxer (CA), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Mark Begich (AK), Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Frank Lautenberg (NJ).

Deficit Commission Slashes Taxes For Wealthy, Corporations, While Raising Retirement Age And Cutting Spending 1DEZ10

IT is no surprise the deficit commission's plan favors corporate America and the wealthy......look who the members are. I fear most of it will be adopted by congress because they are to cowardly to stand up for the poor, the working class and the middle class of America. Where is the morality in this proposal, where is the Christian influence, since a vast majority of the members of congress claim to be Christians? What Christian principles advocate protection of the wealth and power of the rich at the expense of the poor and the workers? It is also extremely disturbing that these Christian legislators and members of the commission have deliberately lied to the American people about Social Security and it's roll in the nation's deficit problems.....Social Security is not part of the deficit problem, Social Security is forbidden by law to contribute to the deficit, and it doesn't, yet these Christian's have been waging a propaganda campaign deceiving the nation, conniving and convincing too many Social Security is a major part of the deficit problem. God Bless America......with our current Christian leadership we will need God's blessings to help us survive.
Click the header to go to the commissions report.....

WASHINGTON — The president's deficit-commission report, scheduled for a vote by the full panel on Friday, proposes to slash tax rates for corporations and for high earners.
The top tax rate is currently 35 percent and is scheduled to rise to 39.6 percent in 2011. The commission would cut that rate to between 23 and 28 percent, while shaving between seven and nine points off the corporate rate.
The commission does propose taxing capital gains and dividends as ordinary income, a move that would result in a higher liability for the wealthy. It also eliminates some corporate tax breaks. But those losses for top earners would be more than offset by their tax cuts.

The commission also addresses Social Security, though the program does not contribute to the deficit and, in fact, is running a multi-trillion dollar surplus. The commissioners would raise the full retirement age to 69 gradually and the early retirement age to 64.

Social Security would be tilted toward a welfare program rather than a social insurance system if the commission's recommendation to provide poorer seniors with a "special minimum benefit" is enacted into the law.
The commission also proposes medical malpractice reform, a long-term goal of the GOP.

The commission had been scheduled to vote on the proposal as required by law on Wednesday, but the vote has been pushed to Friday, suggesting that the commissioners lack the 14 of 18 votes needed to approve it. Some conservatives intend to oppose the bill, including Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), who is widely respected on fiscal issues by his House colleagues.
Sources close to members of the commission say that the proposal is virtually certain to be voted down and that President Obama has not been engaged with the process or deliberations.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Wednesday that he doesn't agree with everything in the report but will vote to support it. "I don't like everything in this package, but I like even less where our country is headed without it. It would be much easier to say no and to oppose this plan. I certainly would have done some things differently if I were writing it myself. But you can't have everything you want," he said.
House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.), who lost election in November, indicated in his comments to the commission that he'd also support it, but didn't come flat-out and say he would vote yes. "I think we should keep this process moving forward," he said, suggesting that if it failed the issue wouldn't be dealt with for years to come.

Story continues below

Commission member Alice Rivlin told the commission Wednesday she would be voting yes and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), often a reliable Obama ally, said she would vote no. David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell -- yes, the CEO of Honeywell is on the commission -- said that he'd be voting in support; businesswoman Ann Fudge also said she supported the final product.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), meanwhile, told HuffPost on Tuesday that if the plan kept the same "anemic" revenue approach - cutting taxes for the wealthy - he and other progressives would oppose it. The plan released today differs little in that respect from the one offered recently. "Their proposal on the revenue side was anemic. I've said that to both Alan and to Erskine," he said, referring to the co-chairs, Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles. At the commission's meeting Wednesday, he said that he was staying at the table, but was critical of the report. "To me, you punted," he said, charging that the plan didn't sufficiently tackle corporate tax breaks.

The proposal would also slash spending across the board. Becerra said he objected to what he called "this meat-axe approach of just making across the board cuts and assigning the pain 50-50 to schools and environmental clean up and senior housing, along with defense programs or wasteful security programs that are very expensive."

"I have a real difficult time saying that, DOD, unknown to us where their problems are, should have to pay X amount for its wasteful spending and our schools will pay the price at this commensurate rate, even though there may not have been any sign of wasteful spending on the part of our schools. Now, maybe there is, but I say target that instead of using the meat-axe. That's the biggest concern I have with their approach on the discretionary side," he said.

The commission meets Wednesday to discuss the proposal.
One key vote is former Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern, who is still on the SEIU's payroll in an emeritus capacity. The SEIU on Wednesday scorched the report, putting Stern in a difficult position if he intends to support it. "This proposal is a jobs killer at a time when our number one priority must be putting America back to work. The American people expect real solutions to create good jobs that support a family and bring fairness to our economy," said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry. "It's time for our policies to move beyond the Beltway to reflect the real world. For too long, we've forced the American people to pay the price for the failed economic policies that plunged our economy into crisis and racked up our debt. We need to reduce the deficit - and we can do so without breaking the back of American workers. We can do so without cutting the jobs of nurses, educators, first responders, fire fighters, and millions of other Americans."
Even as the deficit hyperbole hits a fever pitch in Washington, leading progressives are strenuously warning of the devastating effects a turn to austerity would have on the economy in both the short and long term.
There's a high road and a low road when it comes to deficit reduction, they argue. The high road approach includes robust job-creation measures in the short run and long-term investments in infrastructure, education, and other public goods. Sustained economic growth, after all, is the best way to reduce deficit spending.
The low road approach, by contrast, could stifle the economic recovery and accelerate the decline of the American middle class.
Progressives in recent weeks have introduced three of their own deficit-reduction plans, all of which call for increased spending until unemployment falls to manageable levels, and major public investments going forward, paid for through tax hikes for the rich and
for financial speculators.
One progressive member of Obama's deficit panel, Rep. Jan Schakowsky
(D-Ill.), drafted a comprehensive proposal that starkly contrasts with the one from the group's chairmen.
Demos, the Economic Policy Institute and The Century Foundation have produced a "Blueprint for Economic Recovery and Fiscal Responsibility."
And a Citizens' Commission On Jobs, Deficits And America's Economic Future, organized by the Campaign for America's Future, released its proposal on Tuesday.
One of the few areas of agreement between deficit hawks and progressives, interestingly enough, is that the once inviolable defense budget must take a massive hit -- somewhere on the order of $1 trillion over 10 years.
"What the proposals by Representative Schakowsky, EPI, Demos and the Century Foundation, and the Citizens' Commission all demonstrate is that we can reduce the deficit without cutting jobs or undermining the safety nets of Social Security and Medicare," said Mary Kay Henry. "These proposals offer real solutions to move our economy forward, reject the failed policies that created our current crisis, and respond to the demands of the American people to create good jobs."
The AFL-CIO is also out in opposition to the plan. "With this report the Deficit Commission once again tells working Americans to 'Drop Dead,'" said AFL head Richard Trumka. "No proposal on fiscal issues is serious that leaves the Bush tax cuts for the rich in place while raising taxes on the middle class and slashing Social Security and Medicare. All commission members should vote no on this misguided plan."

Does Social Security Have WMD? 12NOV10 & Deep-Six the Deficit Commission Report 11NOV10

HERE is a great piece from HuffPost with a very interesting bit of information 
"More to the point, Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. "Since Social Security is legally prohibited from ever spending more than it has collected in taxes," Dean Baker correctly argues, "it cannot under the law contribute to the deficit."
The Social Security system "fell outside of the mandate" of the Deficit Commission, Baker said. "They must have been expecting extra credit."
This is a bit of news that the deficit commission and the political parties, the Obama administration and the mainstream media seem to have deliberately left out of the story......but thanks to Rep Brad Miller (D NC) this very important tidbit has been pointed out.....WE NEED TO POINT THIS OUT TO PRES OBAMA BY E MAILING HIM AT
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact AND TO OUR REPRESENTATIVE AND SENATORS, FIND THEIR E MAIL ADDRESSES AT 
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

This from HuffPost followed by Dean Bakers piece in The New Republic...
 
The PowerPoint released by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform ("The Deficit Commission"), said we should "Reform Social Security for its own sake, not for deficit reduction."
No kidding. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Not now, not ever.
Critics of Social Security have frequently made alarming claims about the future of the system to support calls for "reform." President George W. Bush conceded in 2005 that "it's not bankrupt yet," but said we couldn't "wait until it's bankrupt." "The problem with that notion is that the longer you wait, the more difficult it is to fix," President Bush said. "You realize that this system of ours is going to be short the difference between obligations and money coming in, by about $11 trillion, unless we act... That's trillion with a 'T.'"
That does sound scary.
So what was the period for that projected shortfall? It was for the "indefinite future."
Forecasts of the end times are usually the work of religious prophets, not economists or actuaries. According to the Book of Revelation, at the end of days earthquakes will level mountains, hail will fall mixed with fire, and a beast with seven heads and ten horns will arise from the seas.
In that context, a shortfall in the Social Security system just doesn't seem like that big a deal.
At least President Bush used the term "projected shortfall," but Republican talking heads sent forth to battle on cable television routinely used the word "deficit," implying that we'd have to pick up the difference.
No, we wouldn't. Here's how it would work if we just left the current law alone.
The system has been running a substantial surplus for a generation because the Baby Boom has been working and paying payroll taxes, and the Baby Boom dwarfs the generation now receiving benefits. The surplus has gone into the Trust Fund, which now stands at about $2.6 trillion (That's trillion with a "T.") As the Baby Boom retires, the system will stop running a surplus later this decade. Then the system will pay full benefits, including cost-of-living adjustments, from payroll taxes and the interest from the Trust Fund. About a decade after that, payroll taxes and interest on the Trust Fund will not be enough to pay full benefits, including cost of living adjustments. Then the system will pay full benefits, including cost of living adjustments, from payroll taxes, interest and the principal of the Trust Fund.
Around 2037, the principal of the Trust Fund will be exhausted. Under the existing law, the system will then reduce the benefits to what can be covered by payroll taxes. The projection is that the benefits would then be reduced by about 22 percent.
A 22-percent reduction in benefits is pretty unattractive, especially if the finances of the middle class are as fragile in 30 years as they are now. But proposals to "fix" Social Security by reducing benefits would really just swap one reduction of benefits for another.
Paul Krugman argues that raising the retirement age is a reduction of benefits that works to the disadvantage of blue-collar workers:

[W]hile average life expectancy is indeed rising, it's doing so mainly for high earners, precisely the people who need Social Security least. Life expectancy in the bottom half of the income distribution has barely inched up over the past three decades. So the Bowles-Simpson proposal is basically saying that janitors should be forced to work longer because these days corporate lawyers are living to a ripe old age.

Would blue-collar workers be better off if we raised the retirement age or let an across-the-board cut in benefits go into effect in 30 years or so? Isn't that a question we should ask?
More to the point, Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. "Since Social Security is legally prohibited from ever spending more than it has collected in taxes," Dean Baker correctly argues, "it cannot under the law contribute to the deficit."
The Social Security system "fell outside of the mandate" of the Deficit Commission, Baker said. "They must have been expecting extra credit."
We are right to worry about Social Security, and we are right to worry about our long-term deficit. But the two are completely distinct.
So proposing to "reform" Social Security because of long-term deficits is like invading Iraq because Afghanistan attacked us.
Or maybe the Social Security system has weapons of mass destruction.

Deep-Six the Deficit Commission Report

• Dean Baker
• November 11, 2010 | 12:00 am

For more coverage of the debt commission report, read Jonathan Chait and Jonathan Cohn.
Senator Alan Simpson, the chairman of the bipartisan deficit commission, spent much of his life scolding people for being dependent on Social Security and Medicare and complaining that they didn’t save enough. Now, based on the draft proposal released yesterday, it appears that he and his co-chairman Erskine Bowles never departed from this attitude in steering their thinking.
Given the state of the economy, the co-chairs’ report reads like a document from Mars. Just to remind those of us who earn their living on planet earth (outside of Wall Street), the country is suffering from 9.6 percent unemployment. More than 25 million people are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work altogether. Tens of millions of people are underwater in their mortgage and millions face the prospect of losing their home to foreclosure.
We did not get here because of government deficits, contrary to what Mr. Bowles seemed to suggest at the co-chairs’ press conference today. We got here because of the bursting of an $8 trillion housing bubble. This bubble was fueled by the reckless and possibly unlawful practices of the Wall Street banks, like Morgan Stanley, the bank on whose board Mr. Bowles sits.
This is important background—because the economy’s current problem has nothing, zero, nada to do with deficits. Its problem is a lack of demand. If there were more demand, more people would be employed. The government is the only force capable of creating demand right now, since the housing bubble wealth that had been fueling the economy has largely disappeared. This means that if our commission co-chairs had ever bothered to look at the current deficit in the context of the economic crisis, they would be complaining that the deficit is too small rather than too large.
Their ignorance of basic economics also leads them to hype unfounded fears about the longer-term picture. If they understood the fact that the current deficit is a support for the economy, rather than a drain on the economy, they would not be concerned about the buildup of debt taking place at the moment. There is no reason that the Fed can’t just buy this debt (as it is largely doing) and hold it indefinitely. (The Fed has other tools to ensure that this expansion of the monetary base does not lead to inflation.)
That way, the debt creates no interest burden for the country, since the Fed refunds the interest to the Treasury every year. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion in interest to the Treasury, nearly 40 percent of the country’s net interest burden. This means that the fears raised by Simpson and Bowles of an exploding debt reaching 90 percent of GDP by the end of the decade have no foundation in reality.
The other fear that Simpson and Bowles raised, the Chinese holdings of debt, should be condemned as xenophobic fear-mongering. Insofar as China’s holding of U.S. assets is a problem, it is holdings of assets period, not just government bonds. If China holds $2 trillion of private stock, bonds, and other assets it has the same impact on the United States as if it held $2 trillion in government bonds. It represents money in interest, dividends, and profits that is flowing out of the United States and to China, meaning that we will be less wealthy since much of our future output will be income to foreigners, not to people in the United States.
But the transfer of wealth to China depends entirely on our trade deficit, which is determined by the value of the dollar, not the budget deficit. Simpson and Bowles decided not to let this basic economic fact get in their way.
Over the longer term, the country is projected to face a deficit problem, but this is almost entirely attributable to the projection that private sector health care costs will continue to grow at an explosive rate. More than half of our health care is paid for by the government, so this projected growth rate of health care costs would eventually lead to serious budget problems in addition to leading to enormous problems for the private sector. However, the underlying problem is the broken health care system, not public sector health care programs. This subtlety also seems to have escaped Simpson and Bowles.
Finally, it is striking that they felt the need to address Social Security's solvency even though it was not part of their mandate. The commission’s mandate was to deal with the country’s fiscal problems. Since Social Security is legally prohibited from ever spending more than it has collected in taxes, it cannot under the law contribute to the deficit.
But Simpson and Bowles are scolds. So they produced a plan that will substantially reduce Social Security benefits for most middle class workers, even though this program fell outside of their mandate. They must have been expecting extra credit.
There are certainly some positive items in the report. For example, they want to limit the mortgage interest-rate deduction for expensive houses. They also want to get rid of the deduction for cafeteria benefit plans; one of the stupidest tax breaks ever designed. But, these items will likely go nowhere, which would be a good place to leave the rest of the report.   
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. His most recent book is False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy (Polipoint Press, 2010.)
For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/79093/deep-six-the-deficit-commission-report

Sanders Calls For Progressive Meeting, Alternative To Fiscal Commission 12NOV10

SEN BERNIE SANDERS (I VT) will offer the progressive caucus in Congress the chance to develop an alternative plan to the deficit commissions report. Whatever they come up with will not become law, but it will provide a basis for a unified front against the gop, tea-bagger, wall street dominated deficit commission giving us the the chance to defeat the most drastic recommendations from simpson, bowles and company. Stay tuned.....
WASHINGTON -- Clearly displeased with the initial deficit-reduction recommendations offered by the fiscal commission chairmen, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced on Friday that he will craft and introduce his own proposals as an alternative.
The Vermont Independent said that he will work with members of Congress, labor unions, seniors' organizations and others to develop alternative suggestions. And while he didn't get into the weeds, he did offer a few general areas that he hopes to target, including ending Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, chopping off Cold War-era Pentagon programs and eliminating of tax credits for big oil companies.
Of the ideas pushed by the commission co-chairmen -- former Sen. Alan K. Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff -- Sanders offered the following:
"It is no surprise that these two favor draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the needs of our veterans, and education while proposing tax reductions for the wealthy and large profitable corporations... Simpson is a darling of the Republican right wing and Bowles is a former investment banker who made a fortune on Wall Street. Their plan was floated amid reports that the two were struggling to cobble together enough support on their own commission to go forward by a Dec. 1 deadline."
The likelihood that a progressive alternative for deficit reduction would get a vote in the Senate, let alone a hearing, is slimmer than the chances of Simpson and Bowles' recommendations making it to the floor unscathed. But Sander's effort isn't necessarily about getting a vote. Rather, there is, currently, one blueprint being offered for the task of deficit reduction and it's largely anathema to the progressive community. Having a second proposal out there serves the purpose of giving the negotiations a bit of bearing.
"We all know that there are a number of fair and progressive ways to address the deficit crisis that would not harm the middle class and those who have already lost their jobs, homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college," Sanders writes, in a letter to those he's inviting for discussions. "The time has come to put these proposals into a package so that the progressive view becomes a part of the national discussion."
Click the link for Sen Sander's letter.
sandersletter

Many deficit commission staffers paid by outside groups 10NOV10 & A Few Facts on the Deficit 23JUL10

ALL chances of trusting the deficit commission's recommendations are gone with the revelation of staffers being paid for by outside interest groups. It was obvious from the start the commission was going to attack Social Security and entitlement programs because the panel members are millionaires and from the ignorant comments of alan simpson. Now we learn the staff is also biased against Social Security and entitlement programs, interested only in protecting corporate welfare programs and the tax breaks for the rich. We all have a stake in the future of Social Security, and need to fight against cuts in Social Security, non-defense entitlement program cuts, and raising the retirement age. Start now by e mailing President Obama at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact and find the e mail addresses for your Representative and Senators at http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml You can also join the fight for Social Security at the website of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) http://www.boldprogressives.org and check my other post on the fight to protect Social Security on this blog by searching for Social Security or deficit commission. This from the Washington Post, followed by 'A Few Facts on the Deficit' from Mother Jones.
 


The leaders of President Obama's deficit commission sparked criticism from both sides of the political aisle Wednesday for proposing broad cuts to federal programs.
But the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has also come under attack for its unusual approach to staffing: Many of its employees aren't employed by the panel at all.
Instead, about one in four commission staffers is paid by outside entities, many of which have strong ideological points of view about how to tackle the deficit.
For example, the salaries of two senior staffers, Marc Goldwein and Ed Lorenzen, are paid by private groups that have previously advocated cuts to entitlement programs. Lorenzen is paid by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, while Goldwein is paid by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is also partly funded by the Peterson group.
The outsourcing has come under sharp criticism from seniors' organizations and liberal activists, who say the strategy is part of a broader conservative bias favoring painful entitlement cuts over other solutions. The fears of some liberal groups appeared to come true on Wednesday, when the commission's two leaders recommended significant reductions for Social Security and other social-welfare programs.
Bruce Reed, the panel's executive director, defended the staffing arrangement as fiscally responsible and said the staff includes a broad range of views. Other staffers paid by outside entities include an analyst from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute and a Clinton administration official who now teaches at Johns Hopkins University, he said.
"We've got wonks from across the spectrum who have been working on this issue for years," Reed said. "Every possible voice from left, right or center has a voice on the commission."
But Barbara B. Kennelly, a former Democratic House member from Connecticut who heads the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said the commission's staffing structure is "unprecedented" and casts further doubt on its fairness.
"Taxpayers fund the commission and they should work independently of Washington lobbyists and power brokers," Kennelly said. "This is the type of shenanigans that average Americans are so upset about right now - that money talks and everyone else is left out."
The debate comes as the bipartisan commission nears a Dec. 1 deadline to recommend a plan for lowering the deficit. The panel's two co-chairmen, former Bill Clinton adviser Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), issued their own recommendations on Wednesday calling for a reduction in Social Security benefits and broad spending cuts for many federal operations.
From the beginning, liberals have complained that the Obama-created commission is tilted in a conservative direction, meaning that it is likely to favor cuts to social programs. (Many conservatives disagree, arguing that Bowles-Simpson proposals to close tax loopholes would result in major tax increases.)
Simpson didn't help relations with liberal groups when he sent an e-mail this summer complaining that the government is "like a milk cow with 310 million tits!" He later apologized for the remark amid demands for his resignation.
Kennelly and other liberal-leaning critics say they are particularly troubled by the influence of Peterson, a billionaire and former investment banker who began a $6 million campaign this week urging lawmakers to cut the deficit. Peterson, co-founder of the Blackstone Group investment fund, paid for a series of town hall meetings this year that included participation by deficit commission members. He also funds the Fiscal Times, a digital news organization that focuses on federal debt issues.
Peterson representatives say the views and goals of his organizations have been distorted. Spokesman Patrick Dorton also said that Lorenzen, a former staffer of Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), is recused from any Peterson business while serving at the commission.
"We're a nonpartisan foundation," Dorton said. "We're committed to creating a dialogue on fiscal issues that includes a broad set of voices."
The Economic Policy Institute, the economics think tank, contributed staffer Ethan Pollack to the commission in hopes of bringing "a more progressive perspective" to the debate, said John Irons, the group's research policy director.
But Irons added that Wednesday's budget-cut proposals also show that staffers have a limited effect on commission policies. "Our view is basically that the commission has gone off the rails," he said.
Reed said about half a dozen panel employees are paid by outside entities rather than the commission, which has a budget of about $500,000. He said the arrangement, while unusual, is a smart way to limit costs by a panel devoted to the same goal.
"We have a very small budget, so we begged everyone we could find in both parties across the spectrum to sign up and help," said Reed, who is on leave as president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "Part of our job is not to add to the problem ourselves."

A Few Facts on the Deficit

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/07/few-facts-deficit

— By Nick Baumann

| Fri Jul. 23, 2010 12:32 PM PDT

— Flickr/cobalt123 (Creative Commons).

The big Friday news dump this week is the Obama administration's projection that the federal budget deficit will reach a record $1.47 trillion this fiscal year. That is, the government will spend $1.47 trillion more than it takes in this fiscal year. There are a few things you should remember when you read about this:

• The current deficit can be attributed almost entirely to the effects of the economic downturn (reduced tax revenue, increased transfer payments), the Bush tax cuts, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. David Leonhardt and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities both have good articles and charts on this.
• The $1.47 trillion number is actually slightly better than the White House's February prediction. But the forecast for next year looks worse.
• Despite stimulus spending, which most independent experts believe improved the job picture, there is still massive unemployment in the United States.
• The median duration of unemployment is at its highest in 50 years.
• Liberals and conservatives will be arguing about what all this joblessness means. Derek Thompson explains: "Does it mean we must increase the duration of unemployment benefits to protect this new class of unemployed, or does it mean we need to stop subsidizing joblessness? Does it mean we need to expand federal retraining programs, or does it mean federal retraining programs aren't working? Does it mean we need more stimulus, more state aid, more infrastructure projects, more public works...or does it mean it's time to stop everything, stand back, and let business be business?" (Liberals go for the first option in each pairing.) This argument can be summed up simply as stimulus vs. austerity. Right now, stimulus seems to be fighting a losing battle.
• Conservatives don't have a record of caring about or reducing the budget deficit. They do have a record of caring about and reducing taxes on rich people.
• We spend almost as much on our military as the rest of the world combined. (A lot of the other countries that are spending big bucks are our allies.) If you include non-Pentagon defense-related expenditures, US defense spending in fiscal year 2010 will be somewhere between $880 billion and $1 trillion—even more if you include the interest we're paying on debt from past wars. Even if you strip out all that stuff, we're going to be spending north of $700 billion on the Pentagon and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan next year.
• Long-term deficits are not the same as single-year deficits, and they have different causes. Our projected long-term deficits are driven almost entirely by the rapidly increasing cost of health care. (We're talking about increases driven by things other than the aging of the population.) If we could hold our health care costs at levels comparable to other countries', our long-term deficits would basically disappear. You can see this for yourself by using the Center for Economic and Policy Research's health care budget deficit calculator.
• Social Security is not the problem.

Three Good Ideas And Three Not So Good Ideas From The Chairmen Of The Debt Commission from THINKPROGRESS 10NOV10

WELL it is no surprise the deficit commission, made up of millionaires, wants to cut the social programs like veteran's health care, education, health and science research, consumer product, food and drug safety, and law enforcement,  that we all depend on, especially those of us who are not wealthy. So the battle begins, and it may be a long, dragged out battle, but we can not tire and give in. We need to stand together and fight for Social Security until we are victorious. We can win this battle, don't believe anyone who says we can't. This is from Think Progress, and is followed by a call to action from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (click the link to participate in the Citizens Letter), 100 U.S. Representatives and so far over 39000 regular citizens have signed on, and the letter is just one day old!
Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, Associate Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Debt commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson

Earlier today, the co-chairmen of President Obama’s fiscal commission released their draft proposal (a.k.a. chairmen’s mark) to reduce the deficit. This is not the final report of the fiscal commission, but it is likely going to be the starting point for the remainder of the panel’s discussions. There’s a lot in there, but let’s highlight three good ideas and three bad ideas. Here are the good ideas:

– Defense Cuts: The chairmen’s mark includes about $100 billion in what they call “illustrative” cuts to military spending. These cuts would be used to meet an overall discretionary target of about $174 billon in savings compared to the president’s budget. Their suggested cuts are similar to the Center for American Progress’ own suggestions, and it’s nice to see them take seriously the fact that defense cuts have to be a part of the solution.
– Agriculture Subsidy Reductions: The proposal includes about $3 billion a year in cuts to agriculture subsidies. This is a big step in the right direction. Experts from across the political spectrum have repeatedly called for these subsidies to be substantially reduced. Even President Bush thought so. If we’re going to cut wasteful or unnecessary spending, this is the place to start.
– Revenue: The chairmen’s mark has revenue going to 19.3 percent of GDP in 2015 and then eventually up to 21 percent of GDP. Again, this is an important step in the right direction. The president’s budget plan calls for 19 percent of GDP in 2015, and that assumes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on the richest two percent, along with a host of other revenue raisers. That the chairmen’s proposal results in slightly higher revenues for 2015 is, at the least, an admission that revenue must be part of the solution. I think they’re still a little low on the revenue side of things, but it’s a start.

As for the bad ones:

– Draconian Cuts To Services And Programs: The plan seems to suggest about one dollar in non-defense discretionary cuts for every dollar in defense cuts. I can understand the political logic of this, but substantively it’s a really bad idea. Non-defense discretionary dollars go to pay for some very crucial things like veteran’s health care, education, science and health research, consumer product, food and drug safety, and law enforcement. $100 billion in cuts represents a greater than 15 percent reduction on all these things. Unlike the defense cuts – which could be implemented without harming national security – this level of reduction to such a wide array of public services would really hurt.
– Raising The Social Security Retirement Age: This is a popular idea in certain Washington circles, but as ThinkProgress’ Matthew Yglesias says, it is “basically the very most regressive way to reduce entitlement spending.” There are better ways to bring Social Security into 75 year actuarial balance than asking people to work longer.
– Revenue: It’s good that the chairmen recognize the need for more revenue. It’s bad that they don’t really tell us how they plan to get it. Instead they say they’ll get $80 billion from tax reform, and then offer three visions of what that reform might look like. Now this is just their initial proposal, and I’m sure it’ll get fleshed out more in the coming weeks, but for now, while their spending cuts are pretty specific, their revenue plan is frustratingly muddied.

Stand with 100 House progressives against Social Security cuts.

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BREAKING: The "bipartisan" deficit reduction commission -- appointed by President Obama and led by millionaires -- just made their ideas public. And they are ridiculous.
They recommend to Congress cutting Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age. (Shockingly, the commission of millionaires didn't focus on raising taxes on the wealthy.)
We need to respond fast to make sure this goes nowhere. House Progressive Caucus Chair Raul Grijalva (who we just helped re-elect) has boldly organized over 100 of his colleagues to fight this proposal.
We need to show they have grassroots support. Can you join over 31,000 others in being a "citizen signer" of Grijalva's letter? Click here.
Then, share with others -- including on Facebook or Twitter.
We'll inform Grijalva of our progress, so he can work with us to inform the media of this grassroots support.
Just today, Talking Points Memo reported on a poll we commissioned asking voters their preference on how to reduce the deficit:

• 43% say raise taxes on the wealthy
• 22% say cut the huge military budget
• Only 12% say cut Social Security

Yet this "bipartisan" commission of millionaires recommends the exact opposite? Nancy Pelosi calls it "simply unacceptable."
Help House progressives declare loudly: Cutting Social Security is simply not an option. Click to be a "citizen signer" of Grijalva's letter -- then share this email with others.
Thanks for being a bold progressive.
-- Stephanie Taylor, Julia Rosen, Jason Rosenbaum, Forrest Brown, and the PCCC team

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Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. We've received over 60,246 small-dollar donations. Can you help us hit 65,000?

Paid for by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee PAC (www.BoldProgressives.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions to the PCCC are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

The Most Important Social Security Chart Ever & What I Told Fiscal Commission About Social Security 25JUL10 & 1NOV10 from MOJO

THIS may be one of the best solutions to the Social Security "problem" facing the nation. I still think anyone retiring with a yearly income over $250,000.00 a year shouldn't receive anything from Social Security, but unfortunately that is not going to happen. WE STILL NEED TO BE VIGILANT AND READY TO TAKE ON THE DEFICIT COMMISSION'S SOON TO BE RELEASED REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS AS THEY WILL BE A 
FULL ATTACK ON THE SOCIAL SECURITY PROGRAM. From MOJO 
This is apropos of nothing in particular, but I guess that Social Security is going to be back in the news when the president's deficit commission reports back, so I want to take this chance to post the single most important chart you'll ever see about the finances of Social Security. Here it is:

This is from page 15 of the latest trustees report. What's important is that, unlike Medicare, Social Security costs don't go upward to infinity. They go up through about 2030, as the baby boomers retire, and then level out forever. And the long-term difference between income and outgo is only about 1.5% of GDP.
This is why I keep saying that Social Security is a very manageable problem. It doesn't need root-and-branch reform. The trust fund makes up Social Security's income gap for the next 30 years, so all it needs is some modest, phased-in tweaks that cut payouts by a fraction of a point of GDP and increase income a fraction of a point. Here's a proposal from Jed Graham (see below) that's designed to cut benefits a bit for high earners and encourage them to retire later, and maybe it's great. I haven't looked at it in detail. But the point is that the changes he recommends are fairly small. Any plan for fixing Social Security requires only tiny benefit cuts and tiny revenue increases. It's just not that big a deal

What I Told Obama’s Fiscal Commission About Social Security

By Jed Graham

Thu., July 29, 2010 2:20 PM ET

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with two first-rate staff members of the White House fiscal commission who were seeking creative ideas for restoring Social Security solvency. The gist of my message to them was the same I gave in “A Well-Tailored Safety Net,” a new book that does not reflect the editorial view of IBD. While politics is surely the biggest hurdle to Social Security reform, a menu of mostly flawed and regressive policy options has further raised the bar. If you carefully consider four critical goals of Social Security reform, it is clear that the policy options that have been kicked around for years are ill-suited to producing an affordable and effective safety net. Both political and policy concerns should point the fiscal commission in a new direction: a safety net that is firmer for lower earners than higher earners early in retirement, with benefit cuts gradually unwinding to provide robust support for retirees of all income levels in very old age. This is the only path to Social Security reform that can limit the need for tax hikes and borrowing without cutting away critical parts of the safety net. First, let’s look at those four essential goals of Social Security reform: 1. Preserve income security in very old age. Increasing life expectancy and rising health care costs will leave retirees at growing risk of depleting their savings and being left to scrape by on an insufficient benefit check in very old age. The reality is that Social Security is hardly generous to begin with, particularly once you factor in early retirement penalties that are scheduled to reduce annual benefits by 30% for those retiring at 62. Consider that after a 30% reduction, a career $30,000-earner retiring today would receive just a poverty-level benefit, including the portion that goes to pay Medicare premiums. If we want a Social Security system that maintains the promise of income security late in life, additional benefit cuts that apply in very old age should be off the table. 2. Encourage delayed retirement. If workers opt for longer careers and a shorter time collecting old-age benefits, it would provide the best possible medicine for our fiscal ailments. To the extent that workers offset benefit changes by working longer, it could contribute to economic growth, boost tax revenue and rein in Social Security’s spending path — all while improving personal financial outcomes. Yet while it makes sense to tilt Social Security’s incentives in favor of delayed retirement, it needs to be done in a way that provides a built-in, fail-safe function for those who may have difficulty responding to more constructive incentives. 3. Preserve income support in early 60s. At times of high unemployment, like the present, it’s easy to see the logic in Social Security providing a credible level of income support as early as age 62 — particularly for modest wage earners. 4. Save money. Realistically, savings from Social Security can only make a very modest dent in projected deficits over the coming decade, and the program’s long-term financing gap is dwarfed by that of Medicare and Medicaid. Still, the budget prognosis is so grim that every program needs to be streamlined for maximum efficiency. Those bigger budget problems outside of Social Security mean that the government is in no position to take on the $5.3 trillion in extra debt (in today’s dollars) that would accumulate by 2037 under current law before the last special-issue trust-fund bond is redeemed by the Treasury. If these four goals seem mutually exclusive, that’s because they are under the current menu of policy options for reforming Social Security. Consider one idea that has gotten more attention lately: hiking the official retirement age to 70. This could leave a gaping hole in the safety net in very old age as early retirement penalties reach 43% for those who opt to claim benefits at 62. On the other hand, hiking the earliest eligibility age from 62 to 65 in tandem with an increase in the official retirement age from 67 to 70 would pull away the floor of income support for those in their early 60s and still exact a severe 30% early retirement penalty from those retiring at 65. Such an increase in the early eligibility age would only underscore the unfairness of a big, across-the-board hike in the retirement age, since gains in life expectancy are disproportionately enjoyed by higher earners who generally have the pension savings and range of work skills to allow them to rely less on Social Security in their early 60s. Questions of fairness will always be central to Social Security reform, yet there is a way to address these concerns, while striking an appropriate balance between the need for income security late in life with the need many workers will have for income support in their early 60s. In “A Well-Tailored Safety Net,” I introduce a new solvency approach called Old-Age Risk-Sharing, under which the steepest benefit cuts would come in the initial year of retirement; the cuts would be progressively smaller for lower earners; and they would gradually unwind over 20 years to provide robust support for retirees of all income levels in very old age, when almost everyone will depend on it. Under Old-Age Risk-Sharing, a career-average earner ($42,000 in 2009) retiring after 2032 would face an upfront benefit cut of 20%, which would gradually unwind over 20 years to keep the safety net intact. However, thanks to enhanced incentives for delayed retirement, that worker could fully overcome this upfront cut and attain an extra measure of income security in very old age by working two years past the official retirement age. A lower earner would face a 10% upfront cut that could be overcome with one extra year of work, while a high earner would need to work three extra years to overcome a 30% upfront benefit cut. The surest way of tilting Social Security’s incentives toward delayed retirement (in a way that saves money) is by scaling back the incentives, i.e. benefits, for retiring early. The front-loaded benefit cuts prescribed in Old-Age Risk-Sharing would go further in this regard than the lifelong benefit cuts in the traditional menu of Social Security policy options. And because the cuts are front-loaded, the savings would accrue much faster. Combining Old-Age Risk-Sharing with an increase in the official retirement age to 68 would save as much as hiking the retirement age to 70 on the same time table (50% of the 75-year cash-flow gap or 70% of the official shortfall that treats the trust fund as money in the bank). But Old-Age Risk-Sharing would yield a much more effective safety net: A worker claiming Social Security at 65 would enjoy a benefit that is 14% greater in very old age than if the retirement age were simply raised to 70. While the earliest retirement age would have to rise to 63 to limit the maximum early retirement penalty to 30%, this could be done in a way that preserves 62 as the early eligibility age, with benefits ramping up as careers wind down. Workers could still be eligible to receive 75% of their benefit at 62, with full eligibility phasing in by age 68. Thus, Old-Age Risk-Sharing offers the first cost-effective path to Social Security reform that doesn’t force policymakers to choose between providing income support at age 62 or income security at age 92. http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/1926-what-i-told-obamas-fiscal-commission-about-social-security

White House And Bill Kristol: Despite Not Being In 'Pledge', GOP Will Privatize Social Security 27SEP10 from HUFFPOST

THE republican's plan to privatize Social Security as outlined by Rep paul ryan r WI will spell economic disaster for those on SS now and will destroy the program for future generations. The control of the House after Novembers elections will start the process, one which the gop, tea-baggers and corporate America will do their best to hide from the American public with their massive campaign of lies, deception and propaganda, one the American electorate seems to be swallowing hook, line and sinker...... This from HuffPost
The decision by GOP leadership to largely punt on the question of entitlement reform in their 21-page outline for governance raises an interesting electoral question. If Republicans aren't explicitly calling for Social Security's privatization, can the Democrats realistically campaign as if they are?
The subject was brought up on a conference call with White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer and, not surprisingly, Pfeiffer was quick to answer.
"It is in [Rep.] Paul Ryan's plan," he said. "The leadership in Congress, who is seeking to return [to] the majority, is the same leadership who pushed this before. And if the Republicans want to come out and take that off the table, we are certainly open to that. But they have pointedly refused to do that."
Pfeiffer's argument isn't without some basis. The onus does rest on Republicans to detail their plans for entitlement reform. And so long as they punt on the matter, the evidence the voting public should go on is what remains out there -- not only Ryan's roadmap but the various statements from Republican candidates supporting privatization if not Social Security's elimination altogether.
But in terms of a strict political calculus, Pfeiffer ignored a far more potent charge. Even though GOP leadership left out substantive reforms to Social Security in their 'Pledge', some of the top voices in the party assume it as a fait accompli that there would be a push for privatization should Republicans regain congressional power.
As the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said on "Fox News Sunday" this past weekend:

There are not gonna be earmarks next year. They can't get all their caucus to agree to it now, but if Republicans take the House, there will be such sentiment of the Tea Party nation that they will not, in my view, do earmarks. They will really cut discretionary spending. Paul Ryan will lay down the budget on April 1st, 2011, as chairman of the Budget Committee, that will address entitlements. They're being reasonable; they're being bold in a reasonable way.

Annoying Alan Simpson: The 310,000,001st Reason to Vote 27OKT10

Make no mistake: They're not just trying to roll back Social Security. They're trying to dismantle the entire New Deal, piece by piece. There are at least "310,000,000 Reasons to Vote," one for each and every American citizen. But there's also a 310,000,001th reason:
To piss off Alan Simpson.
That may not be the most high-minded motive for executing one's civic duty, but like they say: Whatever works.
Simpson is, as most people know by now, the co-chair of the Deficit Commission. He's the guy who's using the Deficit Commission platform to lead his own personal jihad against anyone with the temerity to claim (or expect to claim) the Social Security retirement benefits they've funded with their own paychecks. It's Simpson who famously compared Social Security to "a milk cow with 310 million tits." Most people didn't recognize the quote, but Simpson was probably attempting to channel H. L. Mencken's line about government itself, which Mencken called "a milch-cow with 125 million teats" (the population of the United States at the time).
That's right: Simpson was recycling a denigrating comment about the very institution of government. The swapping of "teat" (the commonly-used word for an animal's milk-giving gland) for the word that refers to a woman's breast was Simpson's own alteration, probably intended to disturb the female recipient of his comment. But Simpson real intent was to express his own deep-seated hostility to the very idea of government, a hostility shared by many of the politicians running for office this year. As for Mencken, he was rabidly anti-FDR, referring to him on more than one occasion as "the Fuehrer." Simpson was probably also telegraphing a similar loathing for the entire New Deal and the social programs that followed it.
Why rehash the Simpson flap about cow mammaries? Because it reminds us exactly what we're up against next Tuesday. Social Security is under attack by a well-funded and highly organized coalition made up of billionaires, ethically compromised news organizations, and patronizing members of a self-designated elite (with a few misogynistic misanthropes like Simpson thrown in for good measure). They're making terrific headway, too.
And this is just the beginning: If they succeed in rolling back Social Security, it will just be the first step. Once that's accomplished, every major social program in the country will be in their sights. That's why they've pulled out all the stops to accomplish this first goal. The Washington Post has turned part of its newsgathering function over to an outfit that's funded by an ideologically-driven anti-government billionaire. Well-paid pundits are luxuriating in the opportunity to give lectures on "sacrifice" to older working people struggling to get by, bathing in the glow of self-righteousness as if it were just another mud bath at their customary spa. Technocrats like economist Alice Rivlin are pretending that decisions about spending priorities are "technical problems" rather that political choices, as if the political process itself were some sort of virus that had infected their spreadsheet programs.
Spending priorities are never a "technical" issue, of course. They're statements about our priorities and values as a society. That means that, in a democratic society, they must always be decided politically. That's not a bad thing. It's called "democracy." And the decisions that Rivlin et al. would foist upon us are, by their very nature, political. They just like to pretend otherwise.
136 members of Congress have signed a pledge to "stand firmly" against any Social Security cuts, adding that "We urge you to join us in protecting and strengthening Social Security rather than letting it fall victim to a misguided attempt to reduce budget deficits on the backs of working families." Each and every representative of that pledge is up for re-election on Tuesday.
Now, as it happens, the pledge signers are all members of one political party. It shouldn't be that way in a representative democracy. Political one-sidedness on Social Security represents a breakdown of the democratic process, since three-fourths of all Americans oppose cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit -- including 77% of Republicans and 76% of Tea Party supporters! There should be a bipartisan drive to protect Social Security, an across-the-aisle effort to counteract the Inside-the-Beltway fixation on cutting it. Maybe someday there will be, despite the efforts of the technocratic ideologues and the billionaire media-influencers.
That's why there are 310,000,000 reasons to vote. That's one for each and every American who has paid into the Social Security Trust Fund through their payroll taxes, and who deserves to receive the promised level of benefits when they retire. There are 310,000,000 reasons to vote, one for each and every American born into a society where everyone was assured a minimum level of protection from privation and want when they're unable to work because of age or disability. There are 310,000,000 reasons to vote, one for every American raised to believe that government has a legitimate role to play in assuring the well-being, safety, and security of its citizens.
Then there's the 310,000,001th reason: To frustrate, aggravate, and otherwise annoy Alan Simpson, an already disagreeable individual who's likely to become even more so if he's thwarted in his lifelong quest to shaft older Americans (or "greedy geezers," as he likes to call them). Sure, that's not the best reason to vote - but, hey, it's a reason.
And if Simpson doesn't like the election results, then as the old expression goes: "Tough titty."
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