AOC and Ilhan Omar want to block Biden's former chief of staff

[Celerity]

207. Meet Bruce Reed, Obama's point man on cutting deficit

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article24602191.html

WASHINGTON — It's going to require sacrifice, it might not be pretty, and people across the political spectrum will have to come together to get it done, warns Bruce Reed, the executive director of the presidential commission that's finding ways to stem the red ink of the nation's deficit. Reed has worked for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, and now is running President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Born in Boise and raised in Coeur d'Alene, his mother, Mary Lou Reed, is a former Democratic state senator.

Reed and the once-wonky question of how to reduce the deficit have taken center stage in the weeks following the election, as the 18-member commission prepares to release its final proposal and vote on it at the end of the month. It'll take 14 votes to send a plan to Congress to vote on — a prospect that's unlikely even though promises to reduce government and the deficit dominated the 2010 campaign season.

The deficit isn't going anywhere, though, Reed said, and he's pleased so many people are talking about the proposal by the co-chairmen of the commission: Democrat Erskine Bowles, the president of the University of North Carolina system, and former Republican Senate leader Alan Simpson of Wyoming.

"We're delighted with the attention that the issue is getting," he said. "It's about time for a serious debate about this issue. Whether we like it or not, bringing down the deficit is going to be the top issue in the next few years. We don't have choice in the matter. We can't go on borrowing like this forever."

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Biden’s Mr. Austerity: Bruce Reed

https://prospect.org/blogs/tap/bidens-mr-austerity-bruce-reed/

Virtually all of the Biden campaign’s senior staff has been named to White House jobs, save one. That would be Bruce Reed, the longtime head of the center-right Democratic Leadership Council, a former chief of staff to the vice president from 2011 to 2013, and a notable budget hawk. Maybe Team Biden is having second thoughts about Reed? Let’s hope so.

In 2010, Reed served as executive director of the Bowles-Simpson Commission, one of Barack Obama’s worst blunders. The commission was created in order to put the federal budget on an automatic pilot to deficit reduction, long before the economy was in post-collapse recovery.

The premature pivot to austerity was a major factor in the Democrats’ record-breaking loss of 63 House seats in the November 2010 midterm election. As executive director of the Bowles-Simpson Commission, Reed was not only an austerity advocate himself. He brought on unpaid staffers from leading austerity organizations funded by Pete Peterson.

When Reed was named to a senior job in the Biden campaign last January, the Peterson-funded Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group bent on cutting Social Security, cheered. “We can’t think of a better person for the job,” CRFB said in a statement.

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Pete Peterson’s Long History of Deficit Scaremongering

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/pete-petersons-long-history-deficit-scaremongering/

Fix the Debt financier Peter G. Peterson knows a thing or two about debt: he’s an expert at creating it. Peterson founded the private equity firm Blackstone Group in 1985 with Stephen Schwarzman (who compared raising taxes to “when Hitler invaded Poland”). Private equity firms don’t contribute much to the economy; they don’t make cars or milk the cows. Too frequently, they buy firms to loot them. After a leveraged buyout, they can leave companies so loaded up with debt they are forced to immediately slash their workforce or employees’ retirement security.

Scoop: Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman says Trump lost

https://www.axios.com/blackstone-ceo-stephen-schwarzman-trump-biden-61c711ba-1127-4c03-a815-2162317e5066.html

It's over. That's what Blackstone chairman, CEO and co-founder Steve Schwarzman — one of President Trump's most loyal allies — and other top Republicans are signaling to the defeated president, 16 days after Joe Biden clinched the win.

Joe Biden Must Keep Anti-Social Security Bruce Reed Far Away From His Administration

https://socialsecurityworks.org/2020/11/19/joe-biden-must-keep-anti-social-security-bruce-reed-far-away-from-his-administration/

(Washington, DC) — The following is a statement from Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works, on reports that Bruce Reed is a front-runner to head the Office of Management and Budget in a Joe Biden Administration:

“Joe Biden ran for President on a promise to protect and expand Social Security. Seniors listened, and delivered his margin of victory in key states like Arizona and Michigan.

Appointing Bruce Reed to head the Office of Management and Budget would betray that promise. Reed was executive director of the Bowles-Simpson commission, which proposed massive cuts to Social Security, including raising the retirement age. He has a decades-long obsession with austerity, at a time when we need massive government spending to bring us out of the worst national crisis since the Great Depression. Biden must keep his promises to seniors by keeping Reed far away from the White House.”

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