...
In light of this information, Alan Simpson’s cow metaphor can be seen for what it is–an acid remark intended to make Social Security recipients seem as unsavory as “welfare queens.” Simpson has been a Social Security hater for decades.
Why Obama would appoint him to head an important commission on the future of social security attests to Obama’s propensity to find appointees that helped create a problem, expecting them to solve the problem. But Simpson has no intention of improving the Social Security system. He is one of the “drown government in the bathtub” Republicans. He doesn’t believe in the program, despite its decades of proven worth and the vital assistance it has rendered to the elderly, the disabled, and those with renal failure.
The mission of the debt commission includes proposing “recommendations that meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook, including changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government.” If Simpson believes that the 44 years my father contributed to Social Security (including four years spent in the Army during World War II) makes him a tit-sucker, I was right to belittle Simpson’s ravings for the 18 years he was in the Senate. He deserves about as much respect as someone who steals from a widow’s and orphan’s fund.
Social Security is completely unrelated to the federal deficit, as Burns points out, and has been self-supporting and will continue to be so far into the future. With some minor tinkering, Social Security can be self-supporting for the next 75 years. Contrary to the opinions of some of its critics, it has not been a Ponzi scheme, as the facts make clear. In a Ponzi scheme, new participants pay money to be used to pay older participants. Social Security has paid for itself for the last 75 years and can easily do so for an equal amount of time if it is modified reasonably by people who see its value, not those who would destroy the most successful financial assistance program ever devised in the US.
...
Simpson has not been content to falsely attack Social Security; he has also said that soon our grandchildren will be living in chicken coops. Simpson admits that the money borrowed from Social Security by every President and Congress since 1936 (including the ones he served in) is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, but Simpson doesn’t want it paid back. He is willing to recommend that the government default on this debt to the Social Security Trust Funds (Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund). Simpson believes that the purpose of the Social Security program is to “take care of the lesser people in society.” I suppose anyone who has not been a US Senator with a generous pension is a lesser person to Simpson. To characterize such a view as elitist would be a gross understatement.
Simpson is a nasty person filled with bile and venom against ordinary people and those who want to make the government a functional system that meets the needs of the greatest number. Others have suggested that Simpson has irrevocably tainted the debt commission’s work; that he has infected its deliberations with poisonous invective, just as he has now subjected us all to his belittling fulminations. It is fair to question whether, under these conditions, it is possible for any good to come from the commission’s work. Perhaps it would be better to start over with a group not led by someone hostile to the very idea of government and disdainful of the masses of the people.
MORE...
http://smmercury.com/archives/14015
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
