Today, the usually erudite Yves Smith, publisher of Naked Capitalism, provides us with a guest post from Steve, over at the Daily Bail, who tells Cat Food Commission Co-Chairs Bowles and Simpson, as far as
"selling `cuts to social security'" are concerned:
"...fuck you for even bringing it up."
But, before we "go there," Paul Krugman does pretty much the same thing, albeit a bit more politely, in Friday's NY Times:
The Hijacked Commission
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times
November 12, 2010
Count me among those who always believed that President Obama made a big mistake when he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform -- a supposedly bipartisan panel charged with coming up with solutions to the nation's long-run fiscal problems. It seemed obvious, as soon as the commission's membership was announced, that "bipartisanship" would mean what it so often does in Washington: a compromise between the center-right and the hard-right.
My misgivings increased as we got a better feel for the views of the commission's co-chairmen. It soon became clear that Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chairman, had a very Republican-sounding small-government agenda. Meanwhile, Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chairman, revealed the kind of honest broker he is by sending an abusive e-mail to the executive director of the National Older Women's League in which he described Social Security as being "like a milk cow with 310 million tits."
We've known for a long time, then, that nothing good would come from the commission. But on Wednesday, when the co-chairmen released a PowerPoint outlining their proposal, it was even worse than the cynics expected.
--SNIP--
Matters become clearer once you reach the section on tax reform. The goals of reform, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson see them, are presented in the form of seven bullet points. "Lower Rates" is the first point; "Reduce the Deficit" is the seventh.
So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at the bottom of the list?
Krugman continues on to point out that they're "...proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases -- tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class. " He also reminds us that they've put a couple of the middle class' most important tax breaks on the table: "the deductibility of health benefits and mortgage interest"...but concurrently allowing for "sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate."
...this proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans. And what does any of this have to do with deficit reduction?
Krugman concludes by telling us the Deficit Commission should be told to..."go away."
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(Note: Diarist has received written authorization from Naked Capitalism Publisher Yves Smith to reprint her blog's posts in their entirety for the benefit of the Daily Kos community.)
Guest Post: Open Letter To Alan Simpson & Erskine Bowles Chairmen Of The U.S. Deficit Commission - Regarding Proposed Changes To Social Security
Yves Smith
Naked Capitalism
November 11, 2010
Yves here. The idea that Social Security is in trouble is very much in dispute (although you'd never know that reading the MSM). Even to the extent that fixes are required, some simple ones (one of the biggest, raising the ceiling on payroll taxes, plus an increase in retirement age) would do the trick.
This guest post raises a separate set of issues about proposed changes to Social Security.
First posted by Steve at The Daily Bail
Dear Esteemed Chairmen:
No huge surprise here. What's unfortunate for you is that for years, even decades - going back to Ross Perot - the American people have been prepared for and willing to accept changes (cuts) to Social Security. You, the politicians never gained the courage to ask, but I think for the most part the general public has been ready. And since I've been screaming about these issues my entire adult life, and have always pushed the concept of shared sacrifice as a means to budget sanity and limited government, I'm not comfortable with what I'm about to write, but it's inescapable after watching and recording a 32-month orgy of fiscal mayhem dominated by trillion-dollar bailouts, trillions in wasted stimulus, and trillions gifted to the military-industrial killing machine.
Fast forward from the Perot deficit awakening 20 years ago, and finally, you, the generationally-irresponsible political class seem to be facing up to the unfunded entitlement budget nightmare of your own creation - or at least you're in the discussion phase of `facing it' - and what is the societal backdrop? Seething anger over the recession, the wars, multiple failed stimulus, dollar destruction, QE, and the government bailouts of favored industries.
So against this backdrop, your Commission now recommends cuts to Social Security and a hike in the retirement age to help us on our merry way to a fiscally sane future.
Here's my recommendation for you.
The American people are willing to sacrifice as part of a shared effort at righting our budgetary path, but they are not prepared to be sacrificial lambs led to the `benefits and promises slaughterhouse' while the Wall Street Banker Pigs gorge on trillions in stealth FED and FDIC bailouts, ZIRP giveaways and a record $144 billion in bonuses - an amount equivalent to the 49th largest GDP in the world - $144 billion in bonuses being paid by criminally insolvent banks that are only still operating due to a Wall Street financed K-Street lobbying tsunami that forced FASB to change the accounting rules that now allow these same insolvent institutions of usury and arrogance to apply Faustian valuations to complete shit assets all over their lying, godforsaken, Enron resembling, off-balanced, imbalanced, bs-balanced, sheets.
Banks exist in the lala land of leveraged deferred tax assets representing most of tier-1 capital at Citigroup, of hundreds of billions of helocs at Wells Fargo worth pennies, but marked at dollars, of hundreds of billions of fraudulent MBS pumped out by Countrywide, whose liability now sits with Bank of America. This is a mere glimpse of the great banking lie that provides cover for the $144 billion insolvent bonus river that bathes the Street, all supported and paid for by taxpayers, Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Therefore, ultimately, taxpayers.
In this environment, selling `cuts to social security' is not going to work, and considering the role you both played in creating the irresponsible federal spending machine that now controls Washington and has bankrupted future unborn generations, fuck you for even bringing it up.
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I asked THIS question, in a comment in Slinkerwink's diary, earlier on Thursday: "Why was Pandora's Box opened in the first place?"
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Hmmm..."Fuck you." And, "Go away." Like I always say, "Sometimes less is more." :-)