Does Hillary Clinton Support Cuts to Social Security?

Hillary Clinton explains her Social Security ideas to the Politics and Eggs Event in New Hampshire (source) 

by Gaius Publius

Sure seems like it, but judge for yourself. Watch the above video starting at about 28:50 (if all is well in HTML land, I've queued it up for you). In case you haven't thought it through, raising the retirement age is a benefit cut. There's no other way to say it.

From a transcript (paragraphing and emphasis mine):

Clinton: Yes you know, I think there are three parts to what we have to do with Social Security and the first is we really do have to defend Social Security from the continuing efforts by some to privatize it, which I have been studying and opposing for a long time because the numbers just don’t work out [!]. And in the Bush administration when I was in the Senate I was one of the leaders in the fight against the Bush plan to privatize and it is something that I number one, we’ll focus on: we are not going to privatize Social Security.

Secondly, I am concerned about those people on Social Security who are most vulnerable in terms of what their monthly payout is. That is primarily divorced, widowed, single women who either never worked themselves or worked only a little bit so they have either just their own earnings to depend on or they had a spouse who also was a low wage worker and the first and most important task I think is to make sure that we get the monthly payment for the poorest Social Security recipients up. So that would be the first thing I would look at.

Thirdly, we do have to consider ways to make sure that the funding of Social Security does maintain the system. I think we have a number of options, this would be something that I would look at, I do not favor raising the retirement age. And I don’t favor it because it might be fine for somebody like me, but the vast majority of working people who have worked hard and have had a difficult, maybe last couple of decades trying to continue to work, it would be very challenging for them.

[But] If there were a way to do it that would not penalize or punish laborers and factory workers and long distance truck drivers and people who really are ready for retirement at a much earlier age, I would consider it — but I have yet to find any recommendation that I would think would be suitable.

And I want to look at raising the cap, I think that’s something we should look at how we do it, because I don’t want it to be an extra burden on middle class families and in some parts of the country, you know, there’s a different level of income that defines middle class. So what do we skip and what level do we start at? And we have to consider that. So those are my three priorities in looking at Social Security.

So she's not in favor of privatizing Social Security because the numbers don't work out. She wouldn't raising the retirement age if it hurt or punished low-wage workers, but she would consider raising it if low-wage workers could somehow be protected.

And do note the language. The word you're not hearing in either the question or the answer is "expanding" Social Security. Clinton talks about "enhancing" it, and that's the word the questioner picked up.

So am I confused? Maybe not. I think she'd put the squeeze on the system so long as her changes don't hurt people defined as "middle class" or the "most vulnerable." The comment about raising the cap but not on the "middle class" means this — you pay Social Security tax on the first $118,500 of income (not capital gains, mind you, just income); then no tax on the next, say, $100,000 or $200,000 or so; then taxes start again on the rest, a plan generally called a "doughnut hole."

The "doughnut hole" in Sanders' SS tax plan is between $118,500–250,000. How big would that hole be under a Clinton plan? We don't know. Is $400,000 a "middle class income" in communities like midtown Manhattan? What are her thoughts on that?

And I'm very nervous about her interest in raising the retirement age for the wealthy. If you haven't thought it through, means-testing Social Security changes an insurance program into welfare, and you know how we treat welfare these days. Cut-cut-cut unless you're among the "deserving" — a constantly moving, shrinking target.

The Neoliberal Approach to "Strengthening" Social Security

I take her interest in protecting the vulnerable as sincere. But for the rest, does Hillary Clinton share her husband's (and Barack Obama's) interest in a so-called "grand bargain" along Simpson-Bowles lines, one that makes Social Security less of an insurance program and more of a welfare program? That's Clinton below, by the way, talking up entitlement "reform" at an annual Pete Peterson "summit."

“Our party’s problem is, we are always reluctant to give up the gains of the past to create the future,” Bill Clinton told the audience at the Pete Peterson’s fiscal summit. “Democrats are reluctant to commit to longer-term health-care savings; they don’t want to touch Social Security.” (source)

Two thoughts. One, this is something she needs to say clearly, her plans for Social Security. Two, Barack Obama said his Social Security plans clearly in 2008, then in 2009 he reverted from his 2008 populist self to his 2006 austerity-loving neoliberal self. That makes me very nervous.

(If you like, you can help Bernie Sanders here; adjust the split any way you wish at the link. Bernie Sanders has been pretty clear about actually expanding Social Security and Medicare.)

GP

The Fighting Begins-- What Will The Grand Bargain Look Like?

Will Wall Street win in the lame duck what they "lost" at the polls?

Keep in mind that mainstream conservative, Steve LaTourette (R-OH), who is retiring from Congress in January, told CNN that the Republicans aren't really a national party any more and that their electoral losses are just beginning:

"There's a one-word phrase we use in Ohio for that: crap. I mean, that's nonsense... The Republican Party cannot be a national party if we give up the entire East Coast of the United States and say-- we don't have any Republicans in New England, we don't have any Republicans in the Mid-Atlantic states. We can't continue to diss the Latino voters and-- you know, my wife's a Democrat, and she was so close to voting for Mitt Romney, but then Mourdock and Akin opened their mouth and we sent them running back to the Democratic Party because they think we're nutty. We have the right message on the finances. We have to get out of people's lives, get out of people's bedrooms, and we have to be a national party, or else we're going to lose."

Of course they don't have the "right message on the finances" at all, but I wonder if Democrats in Congress are as aware of that as voters were. This chart comes from a nationwide survey Hart conducted on election night:

It's simple and it's clear but the Senate ConservaDems like Manchin and McCaskill (and our new "hero" Angus King) and the House New Dems-- who now have nearly complete control of the Democratic caucus in that body through corporate shills like Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Steve Israel and Joe Crowley-- are already trying to work out a deal with Boehner and Cantor that screws over the 62% who said they want the rich to pay their fair share and screws over the 73% that wants Congress to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits from cuts, while giving away the store to the 33% of voters who want to see further tax reductions and to the 18% who want to see the budget balanced by reducing spending on Medicare and Social Security.

Also keep in mind that because of colossal incompetence by the DCCC and mind-blowing gerrymandering by GOP legislatures in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Virginia, Michigan, and North Carolina, and Tennessee, Democrats are still a minority in the House even though over half a million more Americans voted for Democrats for Congress than for Republicans.

Based on ThinkProgress’ review of all ballots counted so far, 53,952,240 votes were cast for a Democratic candidate for the House and only 53,402,643 were cast for a Republican-- meaning that Democratic votes exceed Republican votes by more than half a million... The actual partisan breakdown of the 113th Congress will be very different, however. Currently, Republicans enjoy a 233-192 advantage over Democrats, with 10 seats remaining undecided. That means that, in a year when Republicans earned less than half the popular vote, they will control a little under 54 percent of the House even if Democrats run the table on the undecided seats.

Democrats won the presidency and U.S. Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio but, because of gerrymandering (and Steve Israel's deranged targeting) Democrats only won 5 out of Pennsylvania's 18 House seats, 4 out of Ohio's 16 and 3 out of Virginia's 11. These voters and their opinions are not part of the debate over the Grand Bargain. As the AFL-CIO pointed out this week, Simpson-Bowles' candidates-- corporate whores who support selling out working families-- were mostly defeated Tuesday. Nebraska corporate whore Bob Kerrey (D) flopped completely; New Hampshire corporate whore Charlie Bass (R) was fired by voters and replaced with an ardent anti-Austerity progressive, Annie Kuster; and Rhode Island voters backed progressive David Cicilline over corporate whore Brendan Doherty (R). Both Simpson and Bowles formally endorsed all three corporate whores and spent money trying to help elect them.

Wednesday Glenn Greenwald offered a step-by-step look at the contours of how conservative Democrats and the part of the GOP that wasn't obliterated Tuesday will celebrate Washington's triumphant Conservative Consensus by beginning the work on gutting "the crown legislative jewels of American liberalism," Social Security and Medicare.

Indeed, Obama already sought in his first term to implement sizable cuts to those programs, but liberals were saved only by GOP recalcitrance to compromise on taxes. In light of their drubbing last night, they are likely to be marginally if not substantially more flexible, which means that such a deal is more possible than ever.

In other words, the political leader in whose triumph liberals are today ecstatically basking is likely to target their most cherished government policies within a matter of weeks, even days. With their newly minted power, will they have any ability, or even will, to stop him? If history is any indication, this is how this "fight" will proceed:

STEP ONE: Liberals will declare that cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits-- including raising the eligibility age or introducing "means-testing"-- are absolutely unacceptable, that they will never support any bill that does so no matter what other provisions it contains, that they will wage war on Democrats if they try.

STEP TWO: As the deal gets negotiated and takes shape, progressive pundits in Washington, with Obama officials persuasively whispering in their ear, will begin to argue that the proposed cuts are really not that bad, that they are modest and acceptable, that they are even necessary to save the programs from greater cuts or even dismantlement.

STEP THREE: Many progressives-- ones who are not persuaded that these cuts are less than draconian or defensible on the merits-- will nonetheless begin to view them with resignation and acquiescence on pragmatic grounds. Obama has no real choice, they will insist, because he must reach a deal with the crazy, evil GOP to save the economy from crippling harm, and the only way he can do so is by agreeing to entitlement cuts. It is a pragmatic necessity, they will insist, and anyone who refuses to support it is being a purist, unreasonably blind to political realities, recklessly willing to blow up Obama's second term before it even begins.

STEP FOUR: The few liberal holdouts, who continue to vehemently oppose any bill that cuts Social Security and Medicare, will be isolated and marginalized, excluded from the key meetings where these matters are being negotiated, confined to a few MSNBC appearances where they explain their inconsequential opposition.

STEP FIVE: Once a deal is announced, and everyone from Obama to Harry Reid and the DNC are behind it, any progressives still vocally angry about it and insisting on its defeat will be castigated as ideologues and purists, compared to the Tea Party for their refusal to compromise, and scorned (by compliant progressives) as fringe Far Left malcontents.

STEP SIX: Once the deal is enacted with bipartisan support and Obama signs it in a ceremony, standing in front of his new Treasury Secretary, the supreme corporatist Erskine Bowles, where he touts the virtues of bipartisanship and making "tough choices," any progressives still complaining will be told that it is time to move on. Any who do not will be constantly reminded that there is an Extremely Important Election coming-- the 2014 midterm-- where it will be Absolutely Vital that Democrats hold onto the Senate and that they take over the House. Any progressive, still infuriated by cuts to Social Security and Medicare, who still refuses to get meekly in line behind the Party will be told that they are jeopardizing the Party's chances for winning that Vital Election and-- as a result of their opposition-- are helping Mitch McConnell take over control of the Senate and John Boehner retain control of the House.

And so it goes. That is the standard pattern of self-disempowerment used by American liberals to render themselves impotent and powerless in Washington, not just on economic issues but the full panoply of political disputes, from ongoing militarism, military spending and war policies to civil liberties assaults, new cabinet appointments, immigration policy, and virtually everything else likely to arise in the second term.

Indeed, nobody takes STEP ONE in that depressing ritual even a little bit seriously. Nobody believes the declarations of progressives about what is "unacceptable," about what their "red lines" are, about how they will refuse to go along with what they are given if it contains what they declare intolerable. That's because STEPS TWO THROUGH SIX always follow, and until that pattern is broken, STEP ONE will continue to be viewed as a trivial joke.

You ready to count on him to save working families?

Five of the Blue America House candidates and all three of the Blue America Senate candidates won their races Tuesday. We'll hold them accountable, not that we have to... they think the same way we do about it. But what about the progressive groups who helped oust Allen West for Patrick Murphy? What about the progressive groups who helped oust Joe Walsh for Tammy Duckworth? What about the progressive groups who helped oust Ann Marie Buerkle for Dan Maffei? What about the progressive groups who helped oust Chip Cravaack for Rick Nolan? What about the progressive groups who helped oust Roscoe Bartlett for John Delaney? What about the progressive groups who helped oust Bobby Schilling for Cheri Bustos? What about the progressive groups who helped oust David Rivera for Joe Garcia? What about the progressive groups who helped oust Dan Lungren for Ami Bera? Will those groups hold their successful candidates accountable? I hope so. (Blue America didn't endorse any of them because we didn't think they could be counted on. We'll see-- unless Obama and Boehner manage to do the whole thing in the lame duck session before the freshmen take office.)

In response to Boehner’s speech on the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) issued the following statement. [In the speech, Speaker Boehner indicated he would only accept revenue that comes from “dynamic scoring,” the patently false notion that conservatives use to make a case-- and absurd one, but that's what they've got-- that cutting taxes increases revenue.]

“In a speech yesterday, Speaker Boehner doubled down on trickle down-- the same policies the American people soundly rejected in a groundbreaking election just a day before. Boehner ignored voters’ approval of President Obama’s promise to maintain tax rates for 98 percent of Americans while requiring the top two percent to finally pay their fair share.

  “If the Republican leadership is serious about working across the aisle to avert a fiscal cliff, they will support a plan that reflects the needs of the American people. These include allowing the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent to expire, protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, and working with Democrats to enact a jobs plan that puts Americans back to work. Democrats have already been forced to cut important programs such as education and infrastructure by over $1.5 trillion. Now it is Republicans’ turn to come to the table and support a balanced approach to reducing our deficit.”

  In July, the CPC introduced the Deal for All (H.Res. 733), which presents the Caucus’ requirements for any bargain resolving the upcoming fiscal issues:

  •       No cuts to benefits for millions of seniors, children, and disabled Americans who depend on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
  •       Improvements in our tax code so the richest 2 percent contribute their fair share and an end to corporate tax loopholes
  •       Strategic cuts to defense spending to focus on combating twenty-first century risks
  •       Investments in America’s future that put Americans back to work

Now the far-right-wingers can boast of being nuttier than Crazy Al "Let Them Eat Catfood" Simpson

"I guess I'm known as a RINO now, which means a Republican in name only, because, I guess, of social views, perhaps, or common sense would be another one, which seems to escape members of our party. . . . For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you. He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress."

-- Alan Simpson, yesterday on CNN

by Ken

It was just Saturday that Howie wrote about the ferment among "mainstream conservatives" confronting "the radicalization of the GOP, with specific reference to the "mixed blessing" of some of them "taking another look at the Democrats," in the wake of Reaganite Michael Fumento's Salon.com confessional, "My break with the extreme right." Now it's the turn of former Sen. Alan Simpson, aka The Man Who Would Let Old Folks Eat Catfood, who put a fair amount of distance between himself and a sizable contingent of his fellow Republicans. As HuffPost reported, "Alan Simpson Slams Fellow Republicans For Unwillingness To Compromise."

A lot of media types like Crazy Al because he's such a "colorful" quote. Even HuffPost made reference to "his characteristically colorful style." Oh, the fan clubbers are usually careful to maintain a smidgeon of distance between them and their guy, but they usually step well short of mentioning that he the guy is either worse-informed or else just more dishonest than your average Fox Noise propagandameister. On the contrary, there's usually the suggestion, often explicit, that his bluntness is some sort of mark of political "independence."

I'm often taken back by the the violence of his rhetorical assaults on people who are vastly smarter and better-informed than he is. How often, though, do we hear him blasting people who are either dumber or crazier than he is? He did it yesterday with Fareed Zakaria on CNN, as Huffpost reported in "Alan Simpson Slams Fellow Republicans For Unwillingness To Compromise":

Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) lashed out at members of his party on Sunday, slamming them for their unwillingness to compromise on proposed tax increases.

In his characteristically colorful style, Simpson told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that Republicans' rigid opposition to new tax revenues has hampered productivity and diminished the chances of reaching an agreement with Democrats on debt reduction.

"You can’t cut spending your way out of this hole," Simpson, who was appointed as co-chair of President Obama's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010, said. "You can’t grow your way out of this hole, and you can’t tax your way out of this hole. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, we tell these people. This is madness."

Simpson continued: "If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the east or something. But if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise. And you learn to compromise on the issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains."

The former senator, along with debt commission co-chair Erskine Bowles, developed a plan in 2010 for bringing down the top tax rate and lowering the deficit by repealing a number of tax cuts and credits. The initial plan, commonly known as Simpson-Bowles, was mostly ignored by lawmakers. A bipartisan budget modeled after their report was rejected by the House earlier this year.

During the interview Sunday, he expressed frustration with his party's focus on social issues, as well as the ability of outspoken figures like Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist to drive the conversation.

By the way, HuffPost has conveniently assembled a gallery of nine Crazy Al video clips for your viewing pleasure.

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Why Did Obama Ever Get Involved With A Deranged, Senile Freak Like Alan Simpson?

"Klaatu barada nikto"

Simpson is only 81 but his brain no longer serves him. More often than not his blurts out the craziest things. But since he doesn't have to run for office again, it barely seems to matter. I guess it wouldn't... if he weren't involved with public policy. But for some reason I still can't fathom, Obama put him in charge-- along with Democratic corporate whore Erskine Bowles-- of a commission that supposed to work up some kind of a Grand Bargain to screw the American people out of Social Security and Medicare. Earlier this spring the California Alliance for Retired Americans protested outside a Simpson Bowles event and below is the letter they got back April 6 (though it was dated April 7). Tell me, does this sound sane to you? But, for that matter, does screwing up Social Security sound sane... and that's just what our political elites thing is the serious thing that adults (themselves) must do.

Erskine Bowles and I thoroughly enjoyed our time on the West Coast and received an excellent reception from folks -- at least those who are using their heads and have given up using emotion, fear, guilt or racism to juice up their troops. Your little flyer entitled “Bowles! Simpson! Stop using the deficit as a phony excuse to gut our Social Security!” is one of the phoniest excuses for a “flyer” I have ever seen. You use the faces of young people, who are the ones who are going to get gutted while you continue to push out your blather and drivel. My suggestion to you-- an honest one-- read the damn report. The Moment of Truth-- 67 pages, and then tell me if we’re not doing the right thing with Social Security. What a wretched group of seniors you must be to use the faces of the very people that we are trying to save, while the “greedy geezers” like you use them as a tool and a front for your nefarious bunch of crap. You must feel some sense of shame for shoveling out this bulls**t. Read the latest news from the Social Security Trustees. The Social Security System will not “hit the skids” in 2033 instead of 2036. If you can’t understand all of this you need a pane of glass in your naval so you can see out during the day! Read the report. Get back to me. My address is below.

If you don’t read the report, — as Ebenezer Scrooge said in the Christmas Carol, “Haunt me no longer!”

Best regards,

Alan Simpson

Nan Basmer, president of California Alliance for Retired Americans responded: "Alan Simpson’s mean-spirited comments insult the intelligence and dedication of retiree activists who worry about their children and grandchildren’s future. Sen. Simpson sounds an awful lot like Mitt Romney and others who will use the recent Social Security Trustees report as political cover for their radical changes. They would put seniors at risk while enriching Wall Street and the big health insurance companies. For instance, increasing the retirement age-- one of their suggestions-- would be extremely unfair to workers, particularly those in blue-collar and service sector jobs. And privatizing Social Security would let Wall Street firms profit while gambling workers’ Social Security savings on the roulette wheel of the stock market."

Raising the payroll tax cap seems to make the most sense, right? Sure unless you're a multimillionaire. We need to be more careful about electing too many millionaires to Congress... even if they're Democrats.

As the buy-partisans hatch their secret budget scheme, you be the judge: morons or just plain thugs?

"We can't give up for a year on trying to address this problem. I think we have to do something."

-- the pride of Idaho, GOP Rep. Mike Simpson (file photo)

by Ken

Lordy, lordy, Heath Shuler is concerned about his "legacy"! And guess who has to pay the price. Really, wouldn't think he has "legacy" enough from his NFL "career"? You know, as a quarterback who promised so much and delivered, well, zilch. Apparently as he prepares to rid the U.S. Congress of his sludgelike presence, he wants even more of a legacy as a worse-than-useless bum. So he's put himself at the center of a "bipartisan" encrustation of congressional barnacles who are working furiously, from the depths of their economic cluelessness and ideological thuggery, to devise a budget "reform" plan that will make the 1% even richer and deepen the misery of everyone else. Whatta guy!

Most piquantly of all, the dark princes of deficit hawkery are working in secrecy!

By accident or designed leak, The Hill has breached their impenetrable armor, reporting its findings -- when else? -- at 5:30am Sunday morning! This strikes me as like the traditional "Friday news dump" on steroids. Under cover of darkness on a late-winter Sunday morning?

It's true that the Simpson-Bowles Cat-Food Commission, to which the new "centrist" cabal clearly traces a line of descent, already placed a premium on secrecy. You remember how, faced with the curiosity of (gasp!) a few reporters, they resorted to holding meetings -- meetings of a public commission, ferchrissakes -- in top-secret locations? All the better to produce . . . well, the set of recommendations those avowed "centrists" no doubt had at the ready when they undertook those, er, hearings. (If a supposedly public commission holds its "hearings" in the secret dark depths of the forest, can anything be said to have been actually "heard"?)

Remembering too that the cat-fooders, despite working under its preferred disclosure mode of "none of yer damned business," was unable to sell its recommendations. From which, apparently, the new buy-partisans have learned a lesson: that their predecessors' fatal miscue was allowing their proceedings to be too open.

In case you missed the story, here's the nut of it:

Lawmakers secretly work on bipartisan deficit grand bargain
By Erik Wasson - 03/04/12 05:30 AM ET

A small, bipartisan group of lawmakers in both the House and Senate are secretly drafting deficit grand bargain legislation that cuts entitlements and raises new revenue.

Sources said that the task of actually writing the bills is well underway, but core participants in the regular meetings do not yet know when the bills can be unveiled.

The core House group of roughly 10 negotiators is derived from a larger Gang of 100 lawmakers led by Reps. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Health Shuler (D-N.C.), who urged the debt supercommittee to strike a grand bargain last year.

That larger group includes GOP centrists like Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), who has said Republicans should abandon their no-new-tax-revenue pledge, as well as Tea Party-backed members like Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).

The key test in the coming months will be to see whether the core group can get buy-in from many of the 100 members who vaguely support "going big" on the deficit once real cuts and tax increases are identified.

The talks are so sensitive that some members involved do not yet want to be identified.

Shuler, who is retiring this year, is keen to establish a legacy as a deficit cutter before leaving Congress and he is involved in the drafting effort.

His efforts have the strong support of House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who is actively meeting with individual Democrats to try to get them on board with finding a compromise that stabilizes the national debt. [Way to go, Steny! We'd expect nothing less of you! -- Ed.]

The House members are working in tandem with Senate negotiators who are looking to turn the outline produced by the Senate's Gang of Six into legislative language.

The goal of both groups is the same: make sure the debt is not growing bigger than the size of the economy. . . .

At this point we get a jolting reminder that we're dealing with people who have spent their lives avoiding learning anything about economics, in particular about how government debt works, and how the programs they've obviously got in their gunsights (the usual despisèd trio of Medicare, Medicaid, and the real prize, Social Security) are funded and work: "The Obama 2013 budget does stabilize the debt in the latter half of the decade, but since it does not cut entitlements, the debt balloons again after 2020 due to Baby Boomer retirements."

In just that seemingly simple sentence there's so much casually tossed-out misinformation and obfuscation at to amount to roughly the equivalent of a full-time four-year program of mis-education. But to return to that genius Mike Simpson:

Simpson said this week that a draft will not be ready in time to offer it as a budget resolution this spring. House leaders plan to bring a House GOP budget up for a vote on March 26.

A source close to the effort said the focus is on drafting now, and negotiators will address when to unveil the result later.

Simpson however said waiting until the lame-duck session to start negotiating a grand bargain does not make sense.

After the election, Congress will face deadline pressures to raise the debt ceiling, deal with expiring Bush-era tax rates and address automatic cuts triggered by the supercommittee's failure. The conventional wisdom is that any politically painful choices like cutting Medicare or raising taxes has to wait until then.

"We can't give up for a year on trying to address this problem. I think we have to do something," Simpson said.

He said that he has personally talked about the project to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who failed to secure a grand bargain with President Obama last summer. But he said leadership is not driving the effort at this point.

Simpson said his involvement at this stage is mainly continuing to educate members of the need to compromise and solve the looming deficit problems sooner rather than later.

The drafting, which he is not taking the lead on, is proving difficult, he said, noting that major deficit proposals in the last year involved major holes.

MIKE IS NO RELATION TO THAT OTHER SIMPSON, RIGHT?

Continuing:

The president's fiscal commission plan, crafted by former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Erskine Bowles, did not completely address healthcare and was vague on what tax breaks to eliminate. {Did not completely address healthcare??? And was vague on what tax breaks to eliminate? Really??? -- Ed.]

"One of the problems with Bowles-Simpson, Domenici-Rivlin, Gang of Six is they're all concepts," Simpson said. "That's different than trying to put things into legislative language."

(Presumably this is still Mike "Not Just a Pretty Concept" Simpson running off his mouth.)

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What's Happened So Far In The Class War Reagan Started in 1981?

Boehner, who signed his pledge, referred to him as a "random person" today

This week, Beltway scold-- and former Wyoming senator-- Alan Simpson (R) was scolding the Republicans on the SuperCommittee.

“Just a quick note about Grover Norquist,” Simpson testified. “If Grover Norquist is now the most powerful man in America, he should run for president. There’s no question about his power. And let me tell you, he has people in thrall. That’s a terrible phrase. Lincoln used it. It means your mind has been captured. You’re in bondage with a soul."

Simpson went on: “So here he is. I asked him. He said, ‘My hero is Ronald Reagan.’ I said, ‘Well, he raised taxes 11 times in his eight years.’ And he said, ‘I know. I didn’t like that at all.’ I said, ‘Well, he did it. Why do you suppose?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. Very disappointing.’ I said, ‘He probably did it to make the country run, another sick idea.’”

Oh, boy... Grover got his weiner whacked. But why should he care? He's already won over and over and over-- and I mean won. Since 1981, when Reagan overtly aligned the government with the interests of the 1% again-- there was that brief New Deal and post-New Deal interregnum-- the rich whose interests Norquist (and the Republican Party and Blue Dogs) champion have scored knock out punch after knock out punch.

[T]he vast majority of the Rich Class really are engaged in a massive cover-up, a widespread conspiracy that includes the Super Rich, Forbes 400 billionaires, Wall Street bank CEOs, all their high-paid Washington lobbyists, all the Congressional puppets they keep in office by spending hundreds of millions on campaign payola and all the conservative presidential candidates praying the same Rich Class dogma.

They’re fighting you, winning big-time, and you’re the loser. It’s just one generation since conservatives put Reagan in office: In those three short decades the income and wealth of the top 1% has tripled while the income of the bottom 99% of all Americans has stagnated or dropped.

Yes, they are at war with you, fighting to gain absolute power over America … and they will never stop their brutal attacks.

...Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

In spite of that unequivocal declaration, Buffett’s Rich Class buddies still want you to believe that it’s the Occupiers, the lazy unemployed, the 99%, someone else, anyone other than their Rich Class that’s fomenting class warfare.

So you need occasional reminders, because the “Rich Class” has been spending mega-bucks for decades to shift responsibility. Fortunately today, folks like the Occupiers aren’t buying the con job. Here’s a few:

Rich Class warriors: puppet-politicians in GOP-controlled Congress

We know the GOP is the Party of the Rich Class. But the Dems are co-conspirators fighting the class war as pawns of the wealthy. No wonder the Occupy Wall Street crowd focuses on the inequality gap between America’s top 1% and the 99% who’ve seen no income growth since the Reaganomics ideology took over American politics. Many are like House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, clones of Ayn Rand’s narcissistic cult of selfish capitalism.
Listen, both parties are singing in harmony: “Yes, there’s class warfare. And yes, it’s our duty to fight for the richest class of capitalists who are making this war. We must help them win, get richer, squeeze more and more out of all Americans.”

Rich Class warriors: Federal Reserve-Wall Street bankers conspiracy

Yes, there are five banks in America that control about 90% of all the deposits … they control over 90% of America’s trading in the $650 trillion global derivatives casino … they control the Federal Reserve through directors and governors … their campaign payola and lobbyists virtually control the presidency, the Senate and Congress … they siphon huge bonuses from depositors, shareholders and pensioners alike:

“So yes, there is a class warfare running our banking system, every day. And yes, the CEOs in our rich class are leading that class war, and winning big. But more in never enough, so we want new ways to skim off profits, because we are invincible, too big and too greedy to fail.”

Rich Class warriors: Pentagon’s Perpetual War-Mongering Machine

The rich class loves war (war profiteering is a big business). Of course they often have to brainwash the 99% with fears like the mushroom-cloud lies Bush-Cheney used to get America into the $3 trillion Iraq War. Americans have a powerful love-hate relationship with war. Why else would we spend almost half our federal budget, several hundred billion dollars, on war every year?

“Yes, there’s class warfare, all right,” the former vice president might say as a one-time defense contractor CEO and oilman who continued profiting in office. He’d obviously admit:
“Yes, we’re in a class war, and it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we proud that we kept winning that war while we was in office.”

Rich Class fighting to turn America back into Reagan’s ol’ Wild West

The list goes on: The Rich Class wants to time-travel America back to a lawless Old Wild West, back to a free-market Reaganomics anarchy where the top 1% trickle down leftovers to the 99% using this kind of self-destructive programs:

• Privatize: Turn Social Security over to Wall Street bankers to run Main Street’s retirements into the dirt (worse than they did in 2008), a $20 trillion blunder that’s guaranteed to trigger total bankruptcy of the America economy.

• Vouchers: Turn our educational and health-care systems into a voucher system so that private companies owned by the Rich Class can siphon off even bigger profits from every little trickle-down bone the wealthy toss to parents, the sick and elderly.

• Regulations: They’ll also turn over environmental, drugs, food, banking and all other regulatory agencies back to be controlled by the very company executives they’re supposed to be regulating, just like Bush and Cheney did for eight years.

• Tax-Free: Extend Bush tax cuts to Rich Class, eliminate estate taxes and give Corporate America another tax–free holiday to return huge foreign profits so they can deposit those profits direct into pockets of the Rich Class.

But, of course, there’s nothing new here. We just forget so easily, because it’s so bad. Which is why we’ll be reminding you often that the Rich Class has been fighting this war against you for 30 years, since Reagan.

And they’re so greedy they cannot stop fighting. So they will likely keep attacking the 99% for another decade, till the 2020 presidential elections, or more likely, till a catastrophic collapse of the economy coming soon.

Yes, folks, America really is under attack daily. We are fighting on the defense in an historic class warfare. Yes, the Rich Class really did start this war. And yes, they really are winning, big-time. And yes, they are addicted to winning at all costs, to get richer and richer just for the sake of getting richer and richer.

They have no conscience about the collateral damage done to the rest of Americans. They’ve lost their moral compass. In short, they will fight this war to the death, yours, theirs, even the death of America. Bet on it: Because more is never enough for America’s morally bankrupt Rich Class.

The Wall Street Journal made a little space on its editorial page yesterday for a non-1%-er, Ralph Nader, no less. He's not talking about guillotines. He's talking about a modest tax of speculation. "Elected representatives," he writes, "have virtually ignored the outrage expressed by protesters on Wall Street and across the country. But the message will keep coming until Congress finally demonstrates that it is listening. A good start would be a tax on financial speculation"-- the kind German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, both conservatives, are pressing on the Euro-zone.

Occupiers throughout the country are pushing elected officials to break the corporate stranglehold on our economy. Both Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) have proposed legislation in the past that would enact a 0.25% tax on the value of stock, bond and derivatives transactions.

But that is far too small. National Nurses United and other progressive groups believe that we would be better served by a rate of 0.5%. This could help curb the wheeling and dealing on Wall Street and raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue to help with our country's economic recovery. According to estimates from a 2009 Center for Economic and Policy Research paper, a small tax perhaps ranging from one-half to one-hundredth of a percent, depending upon which financial product is taxed, could reap $350 billion.

This tax offers another significant benefit: It has the potential to curb risky speculative trading that contributes little real economic value. The Capital Institute's John Fullerton has stated that a financial speculation tax could have a significant impact on the high-frequency trading and other "quant" trading strategies that now comprise an astonishing 70% of vastly bloated equity-trading volume. Over the past few decades, trading volume has grown exponentially. In 1995 the total shares of stock traded on the Nasdaq and the NYSE, not including derivatives and other options, was 188 billion. By the peak of the financial crisis, in 2008, this annual number had skyrocketed to three trillion.

Critics argue that this tax would be borne by ordinary investors, retirement funds or mutual funds. But these arguments fall flat when one considers the enormity of speculative trading that occurs in the stock market. Sen. Harkin, Rep. DeFazio and others in the past few years have proposed protecting ordinary investors from the direct effects of the tax by providing exemptions for mutual funds, retirement funds and for the first $100,000 in trades made annually by an individual.

Worth mentioning: DeFazio's Robin Hood tax is hated by the 1%-ers and their hacks-- from Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Fred Upton and John Boehner to Harold Ford, Ben Nelson and Dan Boren-- but you know who really hated Robin Hood? Yes, Ryan's very own personal anti-Jesus, Ayn Rand. And very childhood!

"The thing that Occupy Wall Street has done is give a clear visual image of the policies the three of us have been advocating since the collapse of our economy in 2007," said Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa who joined DeFazio and Harkin at the news conference.

"The simple truth is, this speculation fee we're talking about is simply designed so those who have abused the system are paying to play," he said.

"These super computers are based on timing principles that have no consideration of how these companies are being managed, the shareholders who are being impacted or the employees who work at those companies.

The transaction fee, which the United States levied for decades until it was abolished in 1966, would also raise billions of dollars that could be used to reduce the deficit or for other purposes. DeFazio and Harkin said their current proposal has not yet been "scored" so there are no precise revenue estimates. Independent budget analysts calculated that their 2009 proposal would have raised $150 billion over 10 years.

DeFazio said that the rate he proposes is far lower than existing rates in most developed nations. He mocked arguments that adding the tax would drive investors overseas.

"I'd say 'sure,'" DeFazio said. "If you want to pay a tax that's three-times higher go to Europe."

It's also less than a fee currently being considered by the European Union. For the average worker who, according to federal data, invests $3,400 a year in a 401(k) retirement account, the transaction tax would add a $1 in addition cost each year.

I'm with Nader on this one-- DeFazio isn't asking for even nearly enough.

Somehow we've got to change the idea that in economic issues the so-called "serious" people can be trusted

"The old Soviet Union had two newspapers, Pravda and Izvestia -- Truth and Light -- and the saying in Moscow was, 'Where there is Truth, there's no Light. And where there is Light, there's no Truth.' It's clear now that the Soviet Union didn't really end.

"The walls came down, and we became them."

-- economist James K. Galbraith, in a blogpost
tearing the Catfish Commission report to shreds

by Ken

As Howie and I, along with scads of other commentators on the Left, have been pointing out repeatedly, under cover of the economic meltdown they themselves did so much to cause, and from which they have managed to get the government to largely extricate their personal interests, the American megacorporate oligarchy has been stealthily advancing a political agenda that even those greedy sons of bitches probably never dreamed they could get away with. I suppose you have to admire the sheer gall.

The fights over the and the Catfood Commission's secretly crafted deficit-reduction proposals and the issue of the expiring Bush tax cuts tend to merge in our minds because they really are part of the same agenda. The same agglomeration of writers has been pointing out since the spawning of the Catfood Commission that it was always devised, not to solve real economic issues -- of which I believe there actually are genuinely critical ones -- but to complete the restructuring of the American economy begun in the Reagan administration, and since then only marginally slowed down, and in many ways actually advanced, by the theoretically ideologically contrary Clinton administration, which in fact shared many of the same assumptions about whose interests should be paramount in the restructured economy.

"Deficit hawks" is the shorthand description for the ideologues of corporate governance who see the deficit as their opening for establishing once and for all who's in charge. And the makeup of the Catfood Commission left no possible doubt that it was commissioned to produce a report that would be a deficit hawk's wet dream. There are pandering pols who profess to be impressed by the commission's "bipartisan" 11-7 vote affirming for the report. Since the ground rules of the commission called for a minimum of 14 "yes" votes, and Bowles and Simpson were unable to drum up more than 11, despite what I assume must have been a fairly intense campaign of "persuasion," suggests how one-sided their document is.

What most disconcerts me about the developing debate about what to do about the deficit is the seemingly universally accepted determination made by our Village political-and-media nexus and for a couple of decades now applied to pretty much any issue that arises, as to who qualifies as a "serious" participant in the discussion. If you swear an oath to Village Principles and Assumptions, you're serious; otherwise you don't even exist. You're consigned to history's future "who could have foreseen?" invisibles. Think of the political and economic catastrophe of the Iraq war and the economic catastrophe of the housing bubble. Plenty of people foresaw both, but even after they were proved right, they not only weren't rewarded, they weren't listened to any more than they had been. Instead generous rewards were given, and the cleanup was entrusted to, the very people who got us into those messes.

The "serious" people.

On the specific issue of the Catfood Commission, economist James K. Galbraith is developing into a "go to" voice of sanity. In a New Deal 2.0 post yesterday, more widely circulated on AlterNet as "Moment of Lies: Galbraith Attacks Lack of Evidence for Frantic Deficit Fear Mongering" (with the subhead "The sky is falling, but not enough to tax the rich apparently"), he began:

The report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, issued on December 1, 2010 by Chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is entitled “The Moment of Truth.” The words appear in block caps on the second page, weighty and portentous. They reappear in the first paragraph of the preamble:

“Throughout our nation’s history, Americans have found the courage to do right by our children’s future. Deep down, every American knows that we face a moment of truth once again.”

These sentences set the tone. The first is a bald-faced lie, as a Westerner like Senator Simpson knows perfectly well. To the contrary, we have often fallen under the sway of robber barons, water barons, oil barons, bison-killers, clear-cutters and strip-miners, hell-bent on maximum pillage in the shortest time. Only occasionally have a few heroes like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and Harold Ickes Sr. emerged to battle for the most precious physical elements of our heritage — and then only with limited success.

In the next paragraph, the Commission states the threat:

“Our challenge is clear and inescapable. America cannot be great if we go broke.”

Exactly what it might mean for America to “go broke” is not explained. Nor is it anywhere in the report. . . .

By all means check out Galbraith's post for the specifics of the bogosity of the commission report. My immediate point is the contrast between the "serious" people whom Village pundits are now crediting with being "realistic" about the deficit, as against an economist as respected as Galbraith, who has nevertheless been relegated to the Party of the Invisible. Remember, he was asked for input by the commission, which he provided in the form of a scathing report, which was strenuously ignored. Some of the hardest work the commissioners seems to have performed was ignoring all realities that don't accord with their designated agenda.

And I'm afraid, once again, that anyone looking to the president as a "centrist" compromiser, someone we might hope will stand up at least in part for Americans who aren't tied to the corporate oligarchy, is living in a dream world. Our friend Ian Welsh made this point once again in a blogpost yesterday:

Obama isn’t about compromise

People, Obama is not and never has been a left winger. Nor is he a Nixonian or Eisenhower Republican, that would put him massively to the left of where he is and to the left of the majority of the Democratic party. Instead his a Reaganite, something he told people repeatedly.

Until folks get it through their skulls that Obama is not and never was a liberal, a progressive or left wing in any way, shape or form they are going to continue misdiagnosing the problem. That isn’t to say Obama may or may not be a wimp, but he always compromises right, never left and his compromises are minor. He always wanted tax cuts. He gave away the public option in private negotiations near the beginning of the HCR fight, not the end. He never even proposed an adequate stimulus bill. He bent arms, hard, to get TARP through.

He’s a Reaganite. It’s what he believes in, genuinely. Moreover he despises left wingers, likes kicking gays and women whenever he gets a chance and believes deeply and truly in the security state (you did notice that Obama administration told everyone to take their objections to backscatter scanners and groping and shove them where the sun don’t shine, then told you they’re thinking of extending TSA police state activities to other public transit?)

Let me put it even more baldly. Obama is, actually, a bad man. He didn’t do the right thing when he had a majority, and now that he has the excuse of a Republican House he’s going to let them do bad thing after bad thing. This isn’t about “compromise”, this is about doing what he wants to do anyway, like slashing social security. The Senate, you remember, voted down the catfood comission. Obama reinstituted it by executive fiat.

If the left doesn’t stand against Obama and doesn’t primary him, it stands for nothing and for nobody.

For the record, let me say that I am prepared to believe we indeed have, not so much a "deficit" problem as a "borrowing" problem -- namely that Americans have been encouraged to take on so much debt that our economy, which now produces hardly anything with which we might be able to pay off what we owe, is in for a mighty fall. We have our own economists screaming about it hear Europeans screaming about.

You know, people like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz and Brad DeLong, people who not only could but did foresee the housing bubble, but whom the Chicago nitwits, not to mention the coalition of megacorporate media and political whores, continue to pretend never existed. We hear it more and more from Europeans -- that is, those of us who occasionally hear Europeans, whom the Right has worked so hard to reduce to bogeypersons to be reviled, presumably for this very purpose. A coming cataclysm in the American economy surely has to be on the minds of the Chinese who own so much of our increasingly dubious paper.

So yes, I am prepared to believe there's a potentially devastating reckoning up ahead. Unfortunately, the people who have been anointed, or have anointed themselves, as "serious" are the last people we should want presiding over it -- or anywhere near it.

#

The GOP Isn’t Interested In Helping The Economy As Long As A Democrat Is In The White House

The title above is a direct quote from yesterday's Paul Krugman column in the NY Times. It's quite extraordinary when you think about it. Steve Benen had something similar to say last week but yesterday, one of the most distinguished economic thinkers in the world, a columnist for the most important newspaper in the world just leveled a charge akin to treason against a major political party. In fact, he did it several times in the column, just in case anyone is skimming and missed it once.

The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that party’s cooperation-- cooperation that won’t be forthcoming.

Elite opinion has been slow to recognize this reality. Thus on the same day that Mr. Simpson rejoiced in the prospect of chaos, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, appealed for help in confronting mass unemployment. He asked for “a fiscal program that combines near-term measures to enhance growth with strong, confidence-inducing steps to reduce longer-term structural deficits.”

My immediate thought was, why not ask for a pony, too? After all, the G.O.P. isn’t interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House. Indeed, far from being willing to help Mr. Bernanke’s efforts, Republicans are trying to bully the Fed itself into giving up completely on trying to reduce unemployment.

And on matters fiscal, the G.O.P. program is to do almost exactly the opposite of what Mr. Bernanke called for. On one side, Republicans oppose just about everything that might reduce structural deficits: they demand that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent while demagoguing efforts to limit the rise in Medicare costs, which are essential to any attempts to get the budget under control. On the other, the G.O.P. opposes anything that might help sustain demand in a depressed economy-- even aid to small businesses, which the party claims to love.

Right now, in particular, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits-- an action that will both cause immense hardship and drain purchasing power from an already sputtering economy. But there’s no point appealing to the better angels of their nature; America just doesn’t work that way anymore.

And opposition for the sake of opposition isn’t limited to economic policy. Politics, they used to tell us, stops at the water’s edge-- but that was then.

These days, national security experts are tearing their hair out over the decision of Senate Republicans to block a desperately needed new strategic arms treaty. And everyone knows that these Republicans oppose the treaty, not because of legitimate objections, but simply because it’s an Obama administration initiative; if sabotaging the president endangers the nation, so be it.

How does this end? Mr. Obama is still talking about bipartisan outreach, and maybe if he caves in sufficiently he can avoid a federal shutdown this spring. But any respite would be only temporary; again, the G.O.P. is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern.

My sense is that most Americans still don’t understand this reality. They still imagine that when push comes to shove, our politicians will come together to do what’s necessary. But that was another country.

Krugman's immediate concern is the "mainstream" Republican Obama appointed to the Deficit Commission, Alan Simpson, who seems to take great pleasure in public displays of derangement. His latest was a shrill cry for "the blood bath in April... When debt limit time comes." Krugman points out that the Republican strategy is to "probably try to blackmail the president into policy concessions by, in effect, holding the government hostage; they’ve done it before. Now, you might think that the prospect of this kind of standoff, which might deny many Americans essential services, wreak havoc in financial markets and undermine America’s role in the world, would worry all men of good will. But no, Mr. Simpson “can’t wait.” And he’s what passes, these days, for a reasonable Republican."

The question for the rest of us is why is Obama appointing saboteurs like Alan Simpson? A Democratic Member of Congress-- until recently one of Obama's most fervent and public defenders, someone who is so disillusioned with him that he now says he'll vote for him in 2012 as the lesser of two evils-- told me last week that Obama isn't just willing to do the bidding of the ruling elite on Social Security, but that he wants to. Obama sees himself leading a great conservative coalition of the center, between Republican-dominated reactionaries and incoherent teabaggers on the one hand and progressives of his own party on the other hand.

Howard Dean, Alan Grayson and Dennis Kucinich have all said they will not primary Obama. Will Bernie Sanders? In that case he'll continue moving inexorably to the right. That isn't just a label. It will mean more of everything we hated about the Bush Regime-- from the national security state to the dismantling of the American social contract. Alan Simpson wants blood. He's liable to get it when ordinary Americans get pushed too far over the edge to not react. Arizona's Republican death panels are for real. And what they come down to is now standard GOP political philosophy-- better to condemn the poor to death than ask the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes.

Instead of trying to save the lives of these people, who had been told that they had a chance to spend a few more years with their families, the Arizona legislature has chosen to take away their hope in order to save an estimated $4.5 million.

Facing a projected $1.5 billion budget deficit, the state of Arizona has decided to make poor people pay with their lives instead of making rich people pay with their treasure.

This didn't have to happen. In a special election in January 2010, the people of Oregon (a state with a comparable average income as Arizona) decided to raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations instead of cutting essential services. Despite an all-out effort to convince voters that taxing the rich would hurt the poor, voters approved Measures 66 and 67, raising tax rates on those most able to pay and allocating the money to preserve state services.

Our economy for the past decade or more has been built on lies. Superfueled by greed and so-called "innovation" in the financial sector, it finally careened off the road and slammed head-on into the cement wall of reality. Instead of taxing the people who caused and profited from this situation, our political system has bailed them out, buried their crimes and passed the costs onto the most vulnerable-- people like the 98 poor men and women who were told their lives might be saved, only to have that hope taken away.

I don't think anyone's going to shoot anyone because a TSA agent gropes their junk... but what happens when members of your family as condemned to die? How many Arizonans would love to take a potshot at Jan Brewer or Russell Pearce about now?

Even If He Ignores Boehner, Always A Sensible Thing To Do-- Obama Should Deal With His 310 Million Tits Problem... And Fast

It's hard to stand behind the Wall Street shills Obama has running his economic shop, Geithner and Summers. Not only do they both serve the most selfish and destructive interests in America, the two of them are at least as responsible for the downturn in Democratic Party fortunes as the other bigtime Wall Street shill on Team Obama, Rahm Emanuel. But in his audition for a role in the national consciousness yesterday, John Boehner didn't call for Summers and Geithner to step down because they're Wall Street shills; he demanded they step down because... well I wanted to say "because they're not shilling enough," but in reality he just said it because it's partisan strategy and reading in any more would be as silly as the speech itself. It's worth reading the official White House fact-check of Boehner's preposterous attacks. (And, remember, as we saw yesterday, it was too early in the morning for him to have been drunk yet.)


Although no serious observer agree with Boehner's reasons, plenty of progressives agree that it's way past time for Obama to get rid of Summers and Geithner (and Emanuel, someone so lame that Boehner didn't mention his name, hoping, no doubt, he'll be around long enough to guarantee big Republican victories in November). However, there's another Obama appointment, perhaps his worst, short of Rahm, since being elected, who he should get rid of even before Summers and Geithner: a misanthrope and drunk, like Boehner, Alan Simpson. Obama should never have created the Austerity Commission or Cat Food Commission to begin with. Appointing longtime Social Security hater Alan Simpson as co-chair was a disastrous blunder-- for Americans. There's now a nationwide demand that Obama fire him at once. Why? Glad you asked. Here's the letter that went out to the President yesterday:

Dear President Obama,

We call for the resignation of Alan K. Simpson as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. We have given the former Senator several chances at redemption, but his email today to our sister member organization, the Older Women’s League, illustrates his clear disrespect for Social Security, women and the American people, highlighted by his degrading, sexist, ageist and profane language. In the closing few sentences of the e-mail he states, “It’s the same with any system in America. We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work.”

The facts speak for themselves, but Mr. Simpson suggests that anyone supporting people who most need help and who deserve the benefits they paid for must be dishonest or stupid. (Greedy Geezers, Pink Panthers, People not caring a whit about their grandchildren, the lesser people) Such open contempt goes beyond the pale and cannot be tolerated from someone in such a position of authority.

The National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO) works in coalition with many other campaigns to prevent misleading and false attacks on Social Security. Forty-five percent of women over age 65, who live alone, do so in poverty. Women, who earn less on average for the same work as men, are hit again upon taking Social Security benefits; due to lower lifetime earnings, women receive on average less than $12,000 per year in Social Security benefits, while men receive nearly $14,000.

Further, women are not living longer in retirement (low-income minority women have seen decreases in life expectancy), and cannot continue to work more years in physically difficult or demanding jobs. Social Security is not an overly generous program helping all seniors live out luxurious retirements. Social Security provides a base level of replacement income for older Americans who can no longer work, and any cuts to benefits, either in the form of smaller checks or by raising the retirement age, will hurt all generations, forcing more and more Americans back into poverty.

It may be good politics to have such an enemy to play off of heading into November, but Mr. President, it is time for you to stand up for the millions of American workers who have paid into Social Security on the promise of a secure retirement, and put them ahead of political sportsmanship. Mr. Simpson must be removed from this commission, either by his own will, or by yours. Show American workers you mean what you say about protecting Social Security. This is your chance.

As RJ Eskow explained at Huffington Post yesterday, the President has simply got to fire this bumbling idiot. It was a terrible mistake to fire Shirley Sherrod. It would be an equally horrible mistake to try to cover up for Alan Simpson, even though she's the daughter of an impoverished share cropper murdered by the KKK and he's the son of privilege, his daddy a senator (who voted against the Civil Rights Act) and governor.

Alan Simpson is the co-chair of President Obama's Deficit Commission, which is charged with creating a bipartisan consensus for balancing the budget. Lately Simpson's foulmouthed tirades have drawn at least as much attention as the Commission's actual work. His latest rant-- which includes denigrating an activist for women's issues with remarks about "a milk cow with 310 million tits" -- crosses the line once and for all. It demonstrates conclusively that he possesses neither the judgment, the ability, nor the emotional stability to carry out his mission. He's become an embarrassment to the President and an impediment to his Commission's objectives. He must resign immediately. If he's unwilling to do so, the President must fire him.

Simpson's notoriously thin-skinned, and he's in the habit of pelting his critics with abusive monologues or emails. That argumentative streak, which has only gotten worse in recent months, leaves him spectacularly ill-suited to the mission the President laid out for him when he announced the formation of his Commission. The President said "I'm confident that the Commission I'm establishing today will build a bipartisan consensus to put America on the path toward fiscal reform and responsibility."

Instead of building consensus, Simpson's been showering skeptics with abuse, rather than persuasion. His run-in with activist Alex Lawson became an Internet sensation, both for Simpson's unbalanced demeanor and for the sheer irrationality of his attempted counter-arguments. A Simpson email to Dean Baker read in part: "if this is the way that you do your reporting, I would think that you would have damn few fans or readers!" (He seems unaware that Baker's a highly respected economist.) Simpson adds: "I loved the picture accompanying your piece. With chin in hand, I first thought of Rodin's The Thinker -- but after reading the piece I can see you haven't done very much of that!"

Depressing, huh? And that's what happens when you embrace bipartisanism for the sake of bipartisanism and get nothing out of it to move the country forward. In someone's mind Alan Simpson is existentially different from John Boehner. But that someone has got to be pretty damn naïve. Yesterday the Blue America/Americans For America team felt pretty inspired after reading Boehner's boneheaded remarks. We decided to run this 30 second spot on television stations in his district. Please give it a look and consider helping us keep it running by contributing here-- or through the pretty blue thermometer just over on the right. Boehner is beatable. The DCCC has this professional courtesy among sharks things going and absolutely refuse to take him on. It's up to us. Would it be worth $5 or $10 to you to help Justin Coussoule run a competitive race against the orange man-- or to help Blue America keep him off balance?




UPDATE: Paul Krugman-- Simpson "Has To Go"

When I started writing this, I looked to see if Krugman had chimed in. He hadn't. But he has now-- and he's calling for Obama to send Simpson home with his fevered dreams of cows with hundreds of millions of tits.

I always thought that the deficit commission was a bad idea; it has only looked worse over time, as the buzz is that Democrats are caving in to Republicans, leaning ever further toward an all-cuts, no taxes solution, including a sharp rise in the retirement age.

I’ve also had my eye on Alan Simpson, the supposedly grown-up Republican co-chair, who has been talking nonsense about Social Security from the get-go.

At this point, though, Obama is on the spot: he has to fire Simpson, or turn the whole thing into a combination of farce and tragedy-- the farce being the nature of the co-chair, the tragedy being that Democrats are so afraid of Republicans that nothing, absolutely nothing, will get them sanctioned.

When you have a commission dedicated to the common good, and the co-chair dismisses Social Security as a “milk cow with 310 million tits,” you either have to get rid of him or admit that you’re completely, um, cowed by the right wing, that IOKIYAR rules completely.

And no, an apology won’t suffice. Simpson was completely in character here; it was perfectly consistent with everything else he’s said, and with his previous behavior. He has to go.

And Rep. Raúl Grijalva, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said pretty much the same thing-- only he's a Member of Congress. “It has become increasingly apparent that his disdain for Social Security is out of line with the majority of Americans. His disregard for the integrity of the program, and for women in general, is unsettling. Americans have invested and earned their right to have a secure retirement, whether or not Sen. Simpson agrees... Social Security belongs to every American who has worked hard, paid taxes, and earned a good retirement. Social Security does not contribute a penny to the federal deficit, and its benefits should not be cut in a misguided attempt to reduce that deficit. If Sen. Simpson truly feels the disgust at Social Security he indicates in this letter, he should consider recusing himself from the commission.”

Let's Hope Krugman Is Right And That Zombies Really Can't Kill Social Security

Erskine Bowles, Alan Simpson & that guy on the right have a plan...

When the corporate plutocracy decided it was time for a slight tweaking to their "we've always been at war with eastasia" worldview, and that, in fact, it would prove profitable for them-- if devastating to American workers-- to embrace Red China, it was certainly not something some pinko Democrat could pull off for them. No, they had to find a good solid red-basher to fly over there and "open" China. Nixon was perfect. And that was the beginning of the end of the American middle class as cheap Chinese manufactured goods started flooding into the country, devastating entire industries and forcing middle class American workers to compete with Chinese workers making eighteen cents an hour-- with no overtime.

The 70 year top target-- well, maybe tied with abolishing the Estate Tax-- of our generationally greed-obsessed plutocrats has been the most popular entitlement program of all times-- Social Security. Conservatives have tried to kill it since before it was even enacted. But after Bush bungled it for them they decided to go the Nixon route-- find an unlikely politician, trusted as a champion of "the little people" and have him kill it. Enter-- Barack Obama and his deadly "deficit commission," to which has has appointed a "bipartisan" slew of committed foes of Social Security and social equality (after even the hidebound Senate rejected the notion), Among the two worst corporate shills are co-chairs Erskine Bowles of Morgan Stanley and senile reactionary Alan Simpson. Others ready to go even further than Reagan in destroying the safety net-- all in the name of preventing rich people from paying their fair share of taxes-- are ex-Honeywell CEO David Cote, ex-CEO of Young & Rubicam Ann Fudge, roadmap sociopath Paul Ryan, and Wall Street darling Jeb Hensarling, the recipient of $2,569,025 from the financial sector most eager for these changes.

This piece of shit is what Obama has working for him?



On his NY Times blog yesterday Paul Krugman made it clear that he thinks Simpson's outburst-- and the ideology and ignorance behind it-- has already killed Obama's chances to deliver for the plutocracy. That whole Serious People thing to tell working families they have to sacrifice for the good of the hardworking billionaires ain't gonna fly this time either.

[T]he commission is already dead-- and zombies did it.

OK, the immediate problem is the statements of Alan Simpson, the commission’s co-chairman. And what got reporters’ attention was the combination of incredible insensitivity-- the “lesser people”???-- and flat errors of fact.

But it’s actually much worse than that. On Social Security, Simpson is repeating a zombie lie-- that is, one of those misstatements that keeps being debunked, but keeps coming back.

Specifically, Simpson has resurrected the old nonsense about how Social Security will be bankrupt as soon as payroll tax revenues fall short of benefit payments, never mind the quarter century of surpluses that came first.

We went through all this at length back in 2005, but let me do this yet again.

Social Security is a government program funded by a dedicated tax. There are two ways to look at this. First, you can simply view the program as part of the general federal budget, with the the dedicated tax bit just a formality. And there’s a lot to be said for that point of view; if you take it, benefits are a federal cost, payroll taxes a source of revenue, and they don’t really have anything to do with each other.

Alternatively, you can look at Social Security on its own. And as a practical matter, this has considerable significance too; as long as Social Security still has funds in its trust fund, it doesn’t need new legislation to keep paying promised benefits.

OK, so two views, both of some use. But here’s what you can’t do: you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that for the last 25 years, when Social Security ran surpluses, well, that didn’t mean anything, because it’s just part of the federal government-- but when payroll taxes fall short of benefits, even though there’s lots of money in the trust fund, Social Security is broke.

And bear in mind what happens when payroll receipts fall short of benefits: NOTHING. No new action is required; the checks just keep going out.

So what does it mean that the co-chair of the commission is resurrecting this zombie lie? It means that at even the most basic level of discussion, either (a) he isn’t willing to deal in good faith or (b) the zombies have eaten his brain. And in either case, there’s no point going on with this farce.

Maybe Obama can bring back Leona Helmsley for the next go-round-- or appoint Tony Hayward; he's going to be needing something to do soon. But if you want to ponder a bit further what Krugman was talking about above, re-read it in the context of his column of a few days earlier, "That '30s Feeling," in which he points out that "suddenly, creating jobs is out, inflicting pain is in. Condemning deficits and refusing to help a still-struggling economy has become the new fashion everywhere, including the United States, where 52 senators voted against extending aid to the unemployed despite the highest rate of long-term joblessness since the 1930s."

Many economists, myself included, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake. It raises memories of 1937, when F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget helped plunge a recovering economy back into severe recession. And here in Germany, a few scholars see parallels to the policies of Heinrich Brüning, the chancellor from 1930 to 1932, whose devotion to financial orthodoxy ended up sealing the doom of the Weimar Republic.