CAF In The News

nytimes.com — By Bob Herbert
If there’s a better government program than Social Security, I’d like to know what it is.
It has gone a long way toward eliminating poverty among the elderly. Great numbers of them used to live and die in ghastly, Dickensian conditions of extreme want. Without Social Security today, nearly half of all Americans aged 65 or older would be poor. With it, fewer than 10 percent live in poverty.

...“If we didn’t have Social Security, we’d have to invent it right now,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future. “It’s perfectly suited to the terrible times we’re going through. Hardly anyone has pensions anymore. People’s private savings have taken a huge hit, and home prices have been hit hard. So the private savings that so many seniors and soon-to-be-seniors have counted on have just been wiped out.
“Social Security is still there, and it’s still paying out retirement benefits indexed to wages. It’s the one part of the retirement stool that is working.”

c-spanvideo.org —

Campaign for America's Future co-director Roger Hickey is interviewed by C-Span's Pedro Echevarria about President Obama’s relationship with the progressive movement. He also responded to comments via telephone, Twitter and e-mail about strategies for economic recovery and how progressives respond to the conservatives' 2011 policy agenda.

washingtonpost.com — President Obama is expected to name a new chief economic adviser as early as this week, but the months-long search process has proven difficult and politically touchy.
….
"It's a big concern when there are these high-level advisers who have been marinated in the industry," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future.

huffingtonpost.com — Quiz: What's responsible for the lousy economy most Americans continue to wallow in?

A. Big government, bureaucrats, and the cultural and intellectual elites who back them.

B. Big business, Wall Street, and the powerful and privileged who represent them.

These are the two competing stories Americans are telling one another.

Yes, I know: It's more complicated than this. In reality, the lousy economy is due to insufficient demand -- the result of the nation's almost unprecedented concentration of income at the top. The very rich don't spend as much of their income as the middle. And since the housing bubble burst, the middle class hasn't had the buying power to keep the economy going. That concentration of income, in turn, is due to globalization and technological change -- along with unprecedented campaign contributions and lobbying designed to make the rich even richer and do nothing to help average Americans, insider trading, and political bribery.

washingtonpost.com — The leaders of President Obama's fiscal commission released a final report Wednesday that is full of political dynamite, including sharp cuts in military spending, a higher retirement age and tax reforms that could cost the average taxpayer an extra $1,700 a year.

But as commission co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan K. Simpson unveiled the plan at a Capitol Hill hearing, it was unclear whether they would be able to build a convincing bipartisan consensus among the panel's members before they are scheduled to vote on it Friday.

The final plan to rebalance the federal budget would cut government spending even deeper than the commission's original proposal, while offering more help to some retirees. It offers an aggressive prescription for reducing deficits by nearly $4 trillion by the end of the decade.

usatoday.com — If Americans aren't prepared for the hard choices needed to control the national debt, most voters here must have missed the memo.

If the Tea Party movement that helped sweep Republicans to greater power this month is to have an impact in Washington, getting control of the national debt would be a logical place to start. A bipartisan presidential commission reports its findings Wednesday, Obama delivers his proposed 2012 budget early next year, and Congress must vote to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit before it's breached next spring.

Cutting the deficit and debt is the preferred prescription for the economy among 39% of Americans, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll conducted Nov. 19-21 shows. That tops other options, including raising taxes on the wealthy, cutting taxes and increasing stimulus spending.

nytimes.com — As President Obama’s fiscal commission faces a deadline this week for agreement on a plan to shrink the mounting national debt, liberal organizations will unveil debt-reduction proposals of their own in the next two days, seeking to sway the debate in favor of fewer reductions in domestic spending, more cuts in the military and higher taxes for the wealthy. The proposals from two sets of liberal advocacy groups highlight the deep ideological divides surrounding efforts to deal with the nation’s budgetary imbalances.

rt.com — Terrance Heath joins Thom Hartmann on the The Big Picture to discuss the recent deficit reduction commission's recommendations to cut Social Security. Interview starts at about 46:45 in the program.

wbur.org — A proposal by a bipartisan task force co-led by Brookings Institute fellow and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin, like the one the chairmen of President' Obama's deficit commission released last week, has something for everyone to hate: spending cuts and tax hikes. And it will probably be attacked the same way that first proposal was -- by advocates on the left and right

In this interview with NPR's Mara Liasson, Roger Hickey sees the deficit commissions as a trap for Democrats. "Starting this deficit commission, it has shifted the entire discussion away from 'how do you get jobs' to 'how do you get deficits under control,' " he says. "It would be the worst thing in the world for the Democrats to allow conservatives to mousetrap them into embracing cuts -- draconian cuts, really -- to Social Security."

nytimes.com — Election Day is approaching, but neither party cares to focus on the nightmare facing millions of Americans who have been laid low by unemployment, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies, and jobs that offer only part-time work, lousy pay and absolutely no benefits. More than 300 economists, including Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, have signed onto a public statement (released by the liberal Institute for America’s Future) urging policy makers not to undercut any real chance at a recovery by focusing prematurely on deficit reduction. What are needed instead are prudent, sensible investments, especially in infrastructure, research and development, and green energy initiatives.