deficit commission

Whatever the President says about Social Security in his State of the Union speech, the push to cut it will continue. A great deal of time, effort, and money has been expended to make sure that it does, and to promote a very limited set of policies for reducing retirement benefits. The centerpiece of those proposals is a plan to raise the retirement age to age 69 by 2075.

This harsh idea is being defended with a promise that there will be a "hardship exemption" for workers whose jobs are too demanding. But that's a promise that's destined to be broken.

There are many reasons why this solution won't work, and here are eight of them: The future is unpredictable. It will be difficult and bureaucratic to define "hardship." The definition of hardship is too limited. Age discrimination leads to unrecognized hardship. It will create cumbersome administrative and legal processes. They're not setting enough money aside. Hardship's impact will be discriminatory. And last but not least, relying on the 'hardship exemption" calls on us to trust politicians even as they're in the act of breaking a commitment.

Let's look at those eight reasons more closely: more »

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The latest Democracy Corps/Campaign For America's Future poll on jobs and the economy has a clear message for the President and his party: Stand up for jobs, and protect Social Security and Medicare. The results couldn't be clearer. Yet it's still rumored that the President's State of the Union will emphasize deficit reduction over job creation, and the White House has refused to assure worried Democrats that the President won't also propose cuts to Social Security.

How many polls will it take to convince the White House that this is political suicide? How many expert analyses will it take to persuade them that its premature to make deficits the priority when the country desperately needs jobs and economic growth?

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If you saw this morning's Progressive Breakfast, you know that Senator Kent Conrad has an op-ed in Politico, "Priority no. more »

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I appeared on the Rick Smith Show this weekend to talk about the Deficit Commission report (it's technically not an official report, but it's being treated like one anyway), and what its recommendations would mean to a lot of people in this country.

Rick, who's based in central Pennsylvania, does a great job of discussing the issues from the perspective of working men and women.  As if that weren't enough, the intro music for this segment (Social Distortion's cover of "Ring of Fire") will be met with great approval among Southern California punk-rockers.  

Our conversation is here. (The clip will start to play as soon as you click on the link, so don't click if you're anyplace where the punk version of a Johnny Cash song might not be well received).

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Politics is not rocket science. Karl Rove and the political witch doctors like to pretend they can concoct mysterious potions to steal elections, but that’s just con man puffery. Politics really is mostly common sense. more »

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The Presidential Deficit Commission has issued its report -- sort of -- and the president has a problem. Like Dr. Frankenstein in the Mary Shelley novel, he built a creature from discarded parts and it took on a life of its own. more »

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The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (“Deficit Commission”) was charged with coming up with a plan to reduce the budget deficits and accumulated debt caused by tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases. It was supposed to come up with a bipartisan package that, taken as a whole, would get votes from both sides of the aisle. more »

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We all despair of the chump Charlie Brown. Each fall Lucy promises to hold the football. Charlie trusts her. And --bam -- she pulls it away at the last moment each time. more »

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The co-chairs of the Presidential Deficit Commission released the final draft of their report today, and it's now scheduled for a Friday vote by members of the Commission. We're being told that it's a fairer and more reasonable document than its predecessor. It's nothing of the kind. In many ways this document is worse than the draft that preceded it, and those much-lauded "compromises" evaporate in the cold light of reality. This new draft is lipstick on a piggy-bank robber, a package of cosmetic changes meant to disguise its true purpose: To raid the future financial security of most Americans in order to benefit a few.

This proposal would still cripple government's vital role in society by imposing arbitrary limits on spending. It would still place great financial burdens on lower- and middle-class Americans while easing those of the wealthy. All in all, it's the most profoundly right-wing policy prescription the nation has seen in decades. Democrats who lack the political courage to oppose it will be remembered for it for a long time to come.

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Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., says that as of this morning she had not been shown the latest proposal of the White House deficit commission, even as she says it is being "shopped around" by its co-chairs in an effort to get the support of a simple majority of its 18 members—not the support of 14 members as was its original goal.

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