Virtual Summit

Bruce Webb writes on Social Security issues for the economic blog Angry Bear.

I have had occasion before to mention the "Leninist Strategy" for Social Security put forth by the right-wing libertarian Cato Institute in 1983 and followed by Social Security 'reformers' ever since. The strategy has three main pillars:

One: reassure current retirees that their benefits won't be cut

Two: convince younger workers that left unreformed Social Security just won't be there for them<.p>

Three: blame the Boomers

Well, time has moved on since 1983 and increasingly pillars One and Three are coming into collision. more »

Roger Hickey is the co-director of Campaign for America's Future.

On Wednesday Wall Street multi-billionaire Peter G. Peterson, who has pledged to spend a billion dollars to panic Americans about deficits in order to get them to slash Social Security and Medicare, is conducting a “Fiscal Summit” in Washington featuring many of the very people who created the deficits Peterson decries.

This summit is designed to stampede President Obama’s new deficit commission (which meets the day before – on Tuesday – for the first time) into adopting their version of fiscal austerity.

At 3:30 PM on Tuesday, I will moderate a press conference, featuring Robert Kuttner, Heidi Hartmann and Dean Baker, designed to present a counter to Peterson’s simplistic, dangerous explanations – and to warn the White House that having the two co-chairs of the Obama deficit commission participate in Peterson’s extravaganza will discredit the already dubious White House claim to be examining all the paths to fiscal sustainability.

But Americans looking for jobs and economic recovery are not likely to be persuaded by the bizarre collection of speakers Peterson has assembled.

The Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy were the first cause of soaring US deficits after Democrats cleaned up the red ink of the Reagan years. So who are Peterson’s headliners? more »

When you think of the people in your life who receive Social Security, do these descriptions fit?

Are they..?

“70- and 80-year-old people living in gated communities, driving their Lexus to the Perkins Restaurant to get the AARP discount. I mean, it’s unbelievable. ” Fiscal Commission co-chair, former Senator Alan Simpson, NPR, April 2010

Do they live in..?

“protracted golden years of idleness… Deranged by the entitlement mentality fostered by a metastasizing welfare state…(who) now have such low pain thresholds that suffering is defined as a slight delay in beginning a subsidized retirement often lasting one-third of the retiree’s adult lifetime.” George Will, Washington Post, April 2008

Do your parents and grandparents use Social Security to…?

“… subsidize a cushy retirement, so seniors could jet set all across the globe on vacations…and too many people rely and count on Social Security funding their weekly shuffleboard tournaments.” Glenn Beck, Fox News, April 2010

We thought not.

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This piece includes the information that the national debt "totaled $8,370,635,856,604.98 as of a few days ago." Boys and girls are you impressed by that big number? Are you scared yet? This is Fox on 15th here -- they'll keep trying.

This sentence continues by telling readers that this number is not "even counting the trillions owed by the government to Social Security and other pilfered trust funds." How did the author determine that the trust funds were "pilfered." The government didn't do what he wanted it to with the money? Wow, that gives a reporter the right to say the money was "pilfered." Apparently it does at the Post.

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Conservatives are trying to crow today because of a new report from the Health and Human Services actuaries argues that new health reform law will increase overall costs, unlike the Congressional Budget Office's conclusions.

This new report is actually old news. The HHS actuaries and the Congressional Budget Office already had differing assumptions and analyses before the congressional vote. Congressional conservatives requested another actuarial report in hopes of launching a fresh attack.

But the actuaries themselves acknowledge that they are not so sure, as the White House's top health policy adviser stressed, because the estimates are "subject to much greater uncertainty than normal."

The uncertainty led both the actuaries and the CBO to be very pessimistic about the various cost-control provisions in the law. But as Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman noted in March, most health policy experts expect the law to perform much better than the government bean counters do: more »

Co-authored by Eric Kingson, Nancy Altman and Lori Hansen.

The rhetoric of the President's choices to chair this important commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, endangers Social Security and suggests insensitivity to 40 million older Americans. more »

That's what readers of a Washington Post article on the possibility of a default by Greece might be wondering. The Post told readers that:

Other large nations, including the United States, that carry increasing levels of debt have worried that the Greek crisis could be a small-scale sketch of their own future. Sovereign debt is coming under increasing scrutiny by global markets, and many analysts fear that U.S. government bonds are not as attractive as they once were?

Of course "nations" cannot worry, only individuals within nations can worry, but the Post doesn't identify any who do. Nor does it identify the "analysts" who are finding U.S. government bonds less attractive.

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