Dana Milbank Likes Folksy Establishment Politicians Who Want to Ruin People’s Retirement

[Donnachaidh]

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/09/04/dana-milbank-likes-folksy-establishment-politicians-who-want-to-ruin-peoples-retirement/

Dana Milbank comes up with some compelling logic to indemnify Alan Simpson for his comments about Social Security: he’s been biased against the program for 20 years, so what’s the problem?

In 1992, Sen. Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican, complained in a speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures about how Social Security, veterans benefits and other programs had made America “like a milk cow with 250 million tits.” As best I can tell, the remark drew no attention or complaint.

Simpson reprised the line two weeks ago, updating it only for the population count. In an e-mail to the head of a Social Security advocacy group, he said that, in America, “We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits!” This time, it was an udder debacle.

Milbank definitely has a career in writing puns for cow calendars (“Udder nonsense!”). But because he’s a firmly ensconced member of the Village establishment, he doesn’t look far beyond his nose at Simpson’s complaint, accepting that an off-budget retirement plan that people pay into and benefits for young men and women sent off to imperial adventures and unnecessary wars are the main drivers of our fiscal woes.

Milbank says that “If the commission does its job right, it will recommend cuts across the government — the Pentagon, social programs, entitlements, veterans’ benefits — as well as tax increases.” He must have been busy searching for new uses of that “udder” joke and shooting new editions of “Mouthpiece Theater” to recognize all the rumors – that the commission will largely look at Social Security and call it a day. That’s because the overwhelming majority of members of the Cat Food Commission support benefit cuts and oppose tax hikes. Their public statements over their entire careers offers a bit of a clue on this.

According to Milbank, if veteran’s benefits and Social Security are sacrosanct “we’ll have an economy like Greece’s.” Except our Social Security benefits rank 25th out of 30 industrialized countries, in an OECD survey. And our veteran’s benefits cost so much because 1) our health care system is unsustainably expensive and 2) we go to war whenever another country looks at us funny, helped along by the likes of Dana Milbank.

More at the link --