Published on The Nation (
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Alan Simpson, Senator Guttermouth, Spews Again
William Greider | August 26, 2010
Retired Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, who inherited a soft-cushion career in politics from his father, is a garrulous old crank who at 79 seems desperate for attention. Simpson likes to pop off provocatively. He cannot resist mocking lesser mortals like Social Security recipients with mean-spirited ridicule. Simpson is an always quotable darling of Washington reporters, who mistake his nastiness for straight talk, who are too lazy to check out his ugly distortions.
Simpson should have been turned out to pasture years ago, but instead he was give a teaching post at Harvard and Barack Obama made him co-chair of the President's bipartisan commission on reducing the federal deficits. Every savvy player in the Capital knows what the president has in mind--whack Social Security benefits to lure Republicans into a grand deal on raising taxes. As I have written more than once, when Washington talks up bipartisan compromise it usually means the people are about to get screwed.
That train is rolling down the tracks now, but don't expect major media coverage to alert the populace. The prestige newspapers are on board for this deal and Obama's commission won't reveal its recommendations until right after the election. Too late for folks to make a stink.
Senator Trash Mouth keeps messing up the plan, however, by provoking outrage with his tasteless zingers. Most recently, Simpson compared Social Security--the federal government's most beloved program--to "a milk cow with 310 million tits." Instead of yuks, the senator got angry blowback--congressional demands that he resign or be fired by the president. Important liberal groups like the AFL-CIO joined the chorus of complaints. Simpson apologized, the Prez stood by him. Personally, I hope Simpson stays on the commission and continues to speak out. He's doing more harm than good for Obama's sleight-of-hand politics.
Anyway, Alan Simpson is not nearly as bad as some political reporters at the New York Times and other leading newspapers who dutifully repeat the establishment's falsehoods and distortions about Social Security. Some reporters probably know better but lack the nerve to write dissenting versions. Many reporters are simply ignorant but loyal to their sources. Social Security, as Nation writers have explained many times, does not contribute a penny to federal deficits and it never will, according to the terms of the law. The opposite is the case.
On the same page the Times reported Simpson's latest gaffe, political reporter Matt Bai contributed a far more outrageous falsehood of his own. In condescending style, he dismissed opponents to Social Security cuts (dimwits like me) as stuck-in-the -past liberals, trying to defend big government against harsh reality. Bai celebrated the courage of Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, a Democrat who evidently embraces the same view. Bai did not mention the people and public opinion overwhelmingly opposed to benefit cuts (check the polls if you doubt this). Someone should ask Congressman Blumenauer's constituents how they feel about his brave stance.
Bai's great falsification was to insinuate that the Social Security's trust fund is bogus--that the massive surpluses collected from working people to pay for their future retirements are meaningless. Social Security, he acknowledged, has amassed a pile of Treasury bonds--IOU's from the government--but he says as a practical matter that money can't be paid back because taxes would have to be raised or more funds borrowed elsewhere. "This is sort of like saying that you're rich because your friend has promised to give you 10 million bucks just as soon as he wins the lottery," Bai explains.
His comparison is a clever but consequential lie, consisted with the elite propaganda. Bai makes it sound like the government is going to give this money to retirees. In fact, it's the other way around. Social Security collected this money from workers as their involuntary savings, better known as FICA deductions. Then the federal government borrowed the money from us and spent it on other things. Congress raised the FICA deductions 25 years ago on all working people to pay for the baby boom generation's copming retirements. The Social Security trust fund has since built up massive surpluses--$2.5 tillion now and growing to $4.2 trillion in 2023--and set it aside for the future. But, starting with Ronald Reagan, the federal government ran massive deficits on its own budgets and borrowed the savings from Social Security to pay for wars and military build-ups, regressive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, among other things.
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