If you haven’t heard of the Debt and Deficit Commission, pay attention. You need to know about it, especially if you are over the age of 50 or so, or hope to be that old someday.
The Debt and Deficit Commission was created by President Obama last April to address the problem of growing federal deficits and to suggest ways to get the budget balanced by 2015. The Commission is made up of current and former U.S. senators and representatives of both parties, plus some corporate CEOs, a former director of the Office of Management & Budget, some advisers to past administrations and a former Union president. The co-chairs are Alan Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to President Clinton. The D&DC is supposed to present recommendations to Congress by no later than December 1.
Now, you may be thinking that it’s a good idea someone is looking at the budget. And you may be right. But what has been leaking out of the D&DC is alarming. It appears that at least part of the D&DC is looking to balance the budget by cutting Social Security. Co-chair Simpson also has made noises about cutting benefits to veterans exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.
Social Security may be the most popular U.S. government program of all time. Since its origination in 1935, Americans have come to depend on Social Security to help them through their retirement years. This includes many, if not most, people diagnosed with the deadly lung cancer mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is caused by exposure to asbestos, which most often happened on the job. But because the disease takes many years to develop, the diagnosis often comes later in life, when the patient is retired.
The Social Security fund is separate from the federal budget, so the money paid out of the fund doesn’t come out of the budget. Yet co-chairman Simpson and some other members of the D&DC have made it clear they want Social Security on the chopping block. Observers speculate they plan to use the Social Security surplus to pay down the federal deficit so they won’t have to consider raising taxes on the wealthy.
That’s why the Debt and Deficit Commission has been nicknamed the “Catfood Commission” — seniors will have to survive by living on cat food.
The good news is that Congress doesn’t have to accept what the “Catfood Commission” recommends. The bad news is that if Republicans gain control of Congress in the November midterm elections, there’s a good chance it will.
Several Republicans running for Congress, such as Alaska Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, are saying openly that the United States should transition out of the Social Security program. Incredibly, in spite of the recent meltdown in the financial sector, many conservatives still are pushing the idea of investing Social Security money in the stock market.
As I wrote in an earlier post, Social Security is not in crisis, and there are ways it could be made solvent for many decades without cutting benefits, raising the rate of FICA taxes, or postponing the retirement age to 70. So why is anyone even talking about cutting Social Security?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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