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By Alex Lawson, Communications Director for Social Security Works.
This is the third installment of our weekly livestream of the Closed Door Debt Commission. The best action is around 9:15am and 11:30am, right as members of the commission are entering and leaving.
President Obama created the Debt Commission by executive order and immediately set the tone by appointing former Senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.
These two picks sent a clear message; Social Security is on the chopping block.
Subsequent picks only heightened fears that the commission’s real task was to slip cuts to Social Security by a public that, for the most part, is unaware of the commission. Many of the picks have a "history of support for both benefit cuts and privatization of Social Security."
Sen. Simpson is famous for his animosity towards seniors, recently saying that for the commission to work, "You’ve got to scrub out [of] the equation the AARP, the Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare, the Gray Panthers, the Pink Panther, the whatever. Those people are lying… [They] don’t care a whit about their grandchildren…not a whit."
During the Clinton White House, Mr. Bowles was known as "Corporate America’s Friend in the White House." Only after the fact did it become clear that Erskine Bowles’ true claim to fame was as "the liaison between Clinton and Gingrich."
In his book, The Pact, author Steve Gillon reports that the biggest deal that Bowles was brokering was a partial privatization of Social Security alongside benefit cuts enacted by "raising the minimum age required for Social Security and for changing the COLA formula."
In a recent discussion, Gillon affirmed that from appearances it looks like the current commission is looking for the same "deal" as the Clinton-Gingrich "pact." And that Erskine Bowles is reprising his role as deal-maker extraordinaire.
The only difference between now and then, is that in Clinton’s time it was the budget surplus that was used to explain the need to "fix" Social Security, now it is the budget deficit being used to explain the same necessity.
Watch the livestream below from 9am-noon, Wednesday May, 19 2010.
Live streaming video by Ustream
I know that watching a closed door is not that riveting, so check out the highlights from the last two weeks here and here.
This week is the meeting of the Tax Working Group. See the membership of the working groups below.
43 Comments
Damn, I can listen at work but have a conference call at 10. Damn.
Is this why Congress hasn’t renewed Medicaid yet either? I’m in fear for my very life from the long arm of the law
Republicans have been trying for years to chip away at the New Deal. Now with two Republican parties controlling everything, this is their chance.
Raising the age for eligibility really pisses me off. Not everyone sits on their ass all day. At 59 my body is broken from standing on concrete 8 hrs. per day, lifting, bending, stooping, and doing hand intensive labor. Let one of these sorry asses walk in the shoes of a factory worker for a day.
Being a closed door session, you probably won’t hear much.
But you’ll see the rats scurrying in and out of the door as they seek our cheese to munch on.
Remember, folks, Social Security is in danger only from the former Nixon Cabinet members and their dupes. It’s just fine, thanks, and will continue to be such if we keep the Cat Food Commission people away from it.
Start spreading the word to every senior you know that Obama wants to gut social security. They’ll turn on this fraud in a heart beat and maybe it can be the beginning of a primary challenge to the first black Republican president.
Maybe Monica Lewinsky can come out of retirement
It’s time to let the seniors know what Obama and his neo-libs have in store for them. These folks will make the teabagger anger look like a love fest.
I think the first thing which should happen is a reassessment of needs — does a 59-year-old multi-millionaire need to collect now, for example?
And what about somebody who is 10 years younger than you are, like me; my life expectancy is going to change drastically over the next 10 years. What happens to the fund if I live 10 years longer than originally planned by actuaries? And what about my kids, who may live 10-15 years longer than that?
Clearly there are people who need the money now, today, and they’ve paid in, they should get it out and it shouldn’t be used for any other purpose besides their security. This is where Al Gore needs to resurface and start talking about that lock-box; the rats are eyeing up Social Security because they have eaten everything else and they want more and it’s not theirs to take.
Raise the cap on income that is taxed for SS. Done and done. Guess we should have realized that Obama beats off to old Ronald Reagan movies, huh?
The way to respond is a push for increased benefits & lowering of the eligibility age. With efficient negotiations things could at least be kept where they are & perhaps modestly expanded. Playing defense only is for the losing side.
Yeah, it would have been interesting is Obama had been running yesterday against a “real” Democrat, wouldn’t it?
Our government/The Corporation has turned, in one decade into a bunch of vampire bats. In one decade, since deregulation, they have crushed the economy, stolen our homes, our jobs,peace of mind and are busily destroying the planet and other countries.
I wonder how much of this is directives from the IMF as well?
Noentheless, why work for The Man until we’re so old and broken we can’t make any more $$$$ for him and the get tossed to the side of the road like garbage?
There was an interesting article in the Atlanta paper (AJC) yesterday (LINK) about the options available to fix SS. There is a list of options, with a percentage of the gap that would be closed by those options. Short story:
Great idea. Let’s primary him with a “real Democrat” so that he won’t be granted another term to pursue his corporatist agenda.
Wouldn’t the thing to do right this minute be to ring AARP’s phone off the hook?
These proposals came from the Senate Special Committee on Aging and have been widely circulated by
Stenographersreporters in the MSM as “tweaks” that will save social security. (See my diary on these proposed changes that is entitled “Killing Us Softly….)The Senate committee is pretending to take a more modest approach, but it still involves benefit cuts, raising the retirement age, and reducing the COLA.
This is a concerted effort by our leaders to jam these changes down our throats. The propaganda machines are working overtime. It’s a full court press.
It’s not even that big of a deal. So long as long-term economic growth averages 2.7% a year or better (and the 75-year period from 1929 to 2004 averaged 3.6% — this with the whole of the Great Depression dragging down the numbers), Social Security never, ever runs out of money. Period.
Set up a commission to cut Social Security 6 months before an election, an election already projected as a blood bath.
This is mind boggling stupid…
Are the Democrats truly suicidal?
Yes, thank you, exactly. But if they are going to persist with this bullshit “fix SS” meme….as some posters are….raising the cap is a more fair solution. *snort* Like that matters.
Serving our country means nothing more now than getting a chance to feed at the trough for awhile. Do it right for the Corporations that run the show, and they get campaign contributions and/or cushy jobs when they are replaced by their exact duplicate (except for what verbiage they spew when the cord in their back is pulled…i.e. “Socialized Medicine!” or “Scary Republicans!)”
Like investingating and prosecuting the Bush war criminals, like single payer, watch how “raising the cap” will be “off the table”.
Obama doesn’t care. He likes Republicans better than Democrats anyway
I thought EVERYTHING was “on the table” even his bastardized “Health Reform”. Now THAT is one thing I’d like to see go
“Off the table”?! To quote Jules, raising the cap is not only off the table, it ain’t in the same ballpark, ain’t in the same league, ain’t even the same fuckin’ sport.
The population in this country (outside of the Top 1%) is only to be squeezed like a sponge for money. They borrowed that SS money we’ve had taken out of our paycheck, and don’t feel like paying it back.
The comission is due to report in December-after the
election when there will be many lame ducks (and a good
amount of time before 2012).If 8-10 million new jobs
were created,SS would be in much better shape. What’s
scary is privatization. My stock retirement account
grew 0.1% over 10 years.A worthless investment.Plus
all those super bonuses,casino behavior,speculation on
Wall Street.Corps are trying to scoop up everything from
the bottom 99% (HCR etc). Time to write floods of
letters etc-even to lame ducks.
And when a new crop of Republicans win in the next election, they’ll be all too happy to help Obama dismantle Social Security. He’ll call it “bipartisanship” and the media will gush about how he finally won the obstructionist Republicans over to his side.
Remember, Obama’s objective is not to get Democrats elected or please the people who voted for him. It’s all about achieving a want-list for his corporate masters. His method so far has been to tell the corporations to draft their own legislation, pay the man at the window, and then Obama will see that what they want gets passed into law.
In Response to Surrt @ 18
The commission is intentionally not going to report until December.
Not directly related to SS, but Obama’s mortgage fix has actually left many people worse off because Obama wanted a style over substance PR win:
Eager for quick results, the Obama administration last year prodded banks to start people on trials without first obtaining documents proving they were eligible. That has led to many crushed hopes.
http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/109577/loan-aid-leaves-some-worse-off?mod=loans-home
Your “bipartisanship” analysis is spot on. However 95% of sitting democrats also have corporate masters. None of them give a rat’s ass bout us.
Love your moniker. I, too, am an “old hippie”.
This.
No, really. This.
If all we try to do is keep what we’ve got, then we’ll succeed in giving up a lot of ground in doing so.
- Lower the Social Security age to 55
- Lift the income contribution cap
- Increase individual benefits payouts
The Commission will report AFTER the election. The Representatives who vote on their findings will stuff this through and send it for Obama to sign before the new Congress is sworn in – IF they want a gov’t job to replace the one they lost in the election because we’re voting out incumbents. They’ll have NOTHING to lose and everything to gain by sending SS $ to Wall Street (privatizing for younger workers) and slashing benefits that can’t be paid anyway to retirees because the $ has already been spent on other “projects” (and interest on that enormous debt they are blowing up and skimming) leaving the SS fund with drawers filled with I-O-U’s accumulated over the years.
Pretty nifty plan by Obama and both parties to steal our retirement and leave us all slaves to the state.
Granted, everything should be “off the table” because SS is fine. But you are right, the establishment walk thru for the sheeple will be something like the following:
1) Social Security is a super-subprime time bomb that will blow up our children and grand children.
2) Growing the economy is NOT an option! Never mind why it’s not, it just isn’t!
3) We can increase taxes or cut benefits BUT….
4) Increasing taxes would hurt the economy
5) Hobson, table for one!
Blackmail based on a fallacy leading to a false dilemma which really turns out to be a Hobson’s choice.
Lovely establishment we have!
In response to PW at #5. I would take a contrarian view. Social Security’s finances are not fine. Around 2015, payouts from Social Security will begin to exceed inflows into it. In theory, Social Security has a Trust Fund of surpluses which would make up for these from 2015 to 2040. Even if nothing was done it is projected that in 2040 Social Security could still pay out on about 70-75% of its obligations. So where is the problem? The surpluses were looted. It was a feature not a bug of the 1983 Social Security reforms, authored by none other than Alan Greenspan. Now there are only three ways for the government and the politicians who have benefited from this looting for nearly 30 years to cover the money they took under false pretenses. They can cut spending elsewhere in government, raise taxes, or cut benefits. The first two are off the table because politicians don’t want their goodies cut (the rest of the federal budget) or their major contributors inconvenienced (the FICA cap removed). This leaves cutting benefits and that is what we are seeing play out with scams like the debt commission.
Anyone seen the 28th Amendment circulating the tubes recently?
It’s easy to fix any problems SS has – restore the graduated income tax to 1968 levels and restore the capital gains tax to 50% of ordinary income tax rates. Let the people who benefited the most from 30 years of deregulation and lower taxes pay their fair share.
The real problem with SS is that Congress has already stolen the surplus created by previous increases in the SS tax and are now faced with a massive increase in expenditures due to us aging boomers. Rather than find a way to replace those funds, Obama and Congress have decided to just cut back on benefits instead. Remember Al Gore’s “lockbox” for Social Security funds? That didn’t happen, so Congress and Bush just stole all that money and spent it on tax cuts for the rich and the Iraq invasion.
Somebody should go to prison for stealing money from SS.
“Somebody should go to prison for stealing money from SS.”
Unfortunately, We’d have to dig up LBJ and all those old dead Democrats who voted to steal the SS $ back in the 60′s.
I’ve said it before and will again…Obama is a Republican. BUT he couldn’t make it in their world so he goes in as a libral Democrate, the very people to embrace him. NOW, he can do what he wanted to all along but couldn’t. This man is a long range planner and one who knows what HIS future should look like. Why anyone is suprised about his actions now that he’s president should really start wondering about 20l2. He won’t get whiter but he will get more GOP. Watch and see.
I heard that happened this year instead of 2015. Social Security is a ponzi scheme. Here are some of the details:
The Social Security Scam
Trust Us: Social Security Works
The so called trust fund has no money. It has been spent by politicians.
The surpluses are in Treasury Bills. And those T Bills are still there. They have not been looted in any financial sense. Just ask yourself, if the government had not put the surpluses into T-Bills, where would it have put them? The stock market? Gold?
As for 30 year government projections, I don’t even trust 6 month government projections. Remember the Obama admin’s projection that unemployment would stay below 8%? How long did it take to blow that estimate out of the water?
That’s a perfect example of Mr Peterson’s right wing propaganda. The only reason that these people dislike social security is because it’s the only damn thing they cannot steal.
Gold- they confiscated that in the 1930′s, and these days they are overselling god knows how many paper gold certificates
Stocks & Bonds – High Freqency Trading, naked short raids, outright Fraud (CDO’s & CDS’s).
Housing – Even if you were not caught up in the housing bubble, your home loses value every time one of your neighbors goes into forclosure.
Seriously, the idea of cutting or eliminating Social Security is bat shit crazy. If it were not for Social Security, the boomers would all be heading into retirement without a lifeline. The market crash wiped out a great deal of privately held “wealth”… but it didn’t touch Social Security.
CarolynC’s diary.
and this is why St. Ronnie’s the gummint is the problem meme is so important. dismantling this part and that part if you lay the groundwork for it.
i wonder if we can stop them. we have a lot to lose if we don’t