Saving Social Security: The Right Message on the Catfood Commission

[Karmadillo]

There are a lot of links in the snippet below I'm too tired to put in. It's worth a click to go to Corrente to access the entire article. The oligarchy has taken a lot from us as of late. We shouldn't let them have social security.

http://www.correntewire.com/right_message

The progressive counter-attack against the President's emerging “austerity” political strategy and program is beginning to emerge. In the last few days, we've seen posts by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson of Social Security Works, Jane Hamsher, Robert Kuttner, and Dean Baker writing against the thrust by the Administration, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and its network of related organizations, and the deficit hawks in the Congress, seemingly aimed at Social Security. These posts make or imply a number of points sometimes in the form of questions. They are:

-- The commission is unaccountable.

-- It meets in secret.

-- Its members will keep their recommendations secret until after the election, and then will present them to a lame duck Congress that is itself unaccountable.

-- That Congress will avoid open hearings, and debates, and also floor amendments in the House and Senate on the recommendations.

-- The Commission lacks diversity in both opinion and also in racial and gender makeup.

-- The Commission members appear to have already made up their minds that America's fiscal problems are mainly due to over-spending rather than under-taxing, and, even though they insist, that everything is”on the table” seem to have decided that military spending can't be cut.

-- The co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, based on public remarks they've made appear to have a clear agenda oriented toward cutting Social Security and Medicare.

-- Since the Commission appears to have already made up its mond about its findings, it's whole process is just a way of avoiding accountability in the upcoming elections. It's all just an end-run around the democratic process

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