Is deficit debate a new political dawn?
Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles think it may be a new day in American politics, one where politicans who hike taxes and alter Social Security stay in office.
Simpson, a former Republican senator, tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he sees evidence of change whenever he strolls through an airport: “I can tell you, we used to get lots of signals. I get more thumbs up now than other digits.”
The pair, co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, have proposed cutting the U.S. budget deficit by reducing defense spending, eliminating tax breaks, hiking the gasoline tax and altering Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Those kinds of measures have been a presciption for political suicide up to now, although the recommendations call for lower tax rates overall.
But with voters agonizing over joblessness, the deficit and growing economic powers like China, Simpson and Bowles believe the public wants to hear straight talk about the country’s problems and the steps needed to set things straight.
“Congress people used to believe if they came up here they’d get punished for making tough decisions. I think it’s just the opposite today,” Bowles says. “They will be severely penalized if they take a walk and don’t make these tough decisions and don’t get real.”
Simpson warns specifically against a current argument that says you can eliminate the deficit by banning earmarks, attacking waste, fraud and abuse, and scaling back foreign assistance.
Washington Extra – A snowball’s chance?
American voters made their feelings very clear last week. U.S. government borrowing is too high and needs to be reduced. How sad, then, that the presidential commission tasked with coming up with a credible plan to cut the deficit is already being dismissed as a non-event.
“This is the most predictable economic crisis we have ever faced,” Erskine Bowles rightly said today as he unveiled his joint proposals with co-chair Alan Simpson.
What is lacking, though, is not a realization of this fact, but the political will and bipartisanship to find a solution. Already, some members of their own commission have expressed skepticism about the plan or dismissed it entirely, while the wider audience in Congress is hardly rushing to embrace the ideas.
The commission was supposed to show the way to bipartisanship and magically supply the missing political will. It is already clear that has not happened.
Bowles and Simpson challenged critics of their plan to come up with better ways to cut the deficit. Somehow, that too seems like a vain hope.
And yet, perhaps, as the White House said, this is “just a step in the process,” or, as Senator Judd Gregg put it, “just a starting point.” Perhaps American politicians will surprise me.
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
Simpson gets delivery from NOW
High drama at President Barack Obama’s deficit commission meeting.
Members of the bipartisan panel were about to settle in at the Senate Budget Committee hearing room to discuss the weighty issues of performance objectives and the merit of one-year vs. two-year budgeting, when the unscheduled happened.
National Organization of Women President Terry O’Neill swooped in with a delivery and proceeded to lecture commission Republican co-chairman Alan Simpson.
“Stop using the deficit as an excuse to cut Social Security,” she said. “The real message we have is don’t throw people out of the middle class by undermining Social Security.”
Then she handed the former senator a bag of baby bottle nipples tied with a bright purple bow to show the group’s anger over remarks Simpson had made comparing the government retirement program to “a milk cow with 310 million tits.”
The comment made in an email to a group that represents older women sparked a howl of protests from liberal groups and NOW called for his removal from the commission.
Simpson ended up apologizing for his comments, but NOW began a “Tits for an Ass” campaign. The group says it delivered 1,500 baby bottle nipples to him. He told O’Neill he would donate them to a children’s hospital.
Tit for tat
Deficit commission co-chair Alan Simpson has apologized for remarks to a women’s group that compared Social Security to a “milk cow with 310 million tits.”
But that is not good enough for the National Organization for Women (NOW), which has launched a “Tits for an Ass” campaign to toss the former Republican senator off the panel that was created by President Barack Obama to recommend ways to cut the $1.4 trillion deficit.
NOW says that for every $5 donation to the group, it will deliver a baby-bottle nipple to the White House to pressure the administration into dumping Simpson who has made similar colorful remarks about the retirement program in the past.
The “T and A” battle started with an email that Simpson wrote to Ashley Carson, the executive director of OWL, which stands for the Older Women’s League. OWL, which formed in the 1970′s as a part of NOW, calls itself the voice of midlife and older women. In the email, Simpson not only called Social Security a milk cow, he told Carson to “call when you get honest work.”
NOW called the email “a sexist rant.”
Some lawmakers have joined the fray, demanding Simpson go. Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, and Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, put out statements late Wednesday urging Obama to dismiss Simpson, who heads the 18-member bipartisan panel alongside Democrat Erskine Bowles. The commission is to make its recommendations on putting the federal budget on a more sound fiscal footing in December.
The commission posted Simpson’s letter of apology to Carson on its web site. Simpson said that when he makes a mistake, “It’s a doozy! ” He suggested the two get together to discuss OWL’s concerns.
Washington Extra – Foot in mouth
Suggestion of the day. Encourage top officials to undertake some basic training in what to say and write in public. Specifically, try and avoid insulting and tactless remarks in print, on camera, in public or in front of journalists.
Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chairman of the president’s deficit commission, has a reputation for blunt speaking, but obviously was not paying much attention when Gen. Stanley McChrystal lost his job earlier this year. Simpson has already apologized for his email, to the executive director of the Older Women’s League, in which he compared the handing out of government retirement benefits to “milking a cow with 310 million tits.”
“When I make a mistake,” Simpson said, “it’s a doozy.” Which at least got me consulting the online dictionary. Nevertheless, there have already been calls for him to fall on his sword.
So much for the Washington scuttlebutt today. More significant perhaps, yet another sign today that the economy might just be heading for a “double-dip” slide back into recession. New single-family home sales fell to their slowest pace on record in July, and durable goods orders were also soft. Lest he seem out of touch on his vacation in the charming resort of Vineyard Haven, President Barack Obama brought his top economic advisers onto a conference call to discuss the latest grim economic data. ”The president is doing everything that we think is appropriate to continue moving the economy in the right direction,” spokesman Bill Burton told reporters.
Finally today, another in our series of Reuters/Ipsos polls, this time from Colorado. Republican Ken Buck, who has harnessed some of the energy and anger of the Tea Party movement, is leading Democrat incumbent Michael Bennet by an eight-point margin. But it’s a different story in the race for the governor’s mansion, where a conservative former Republican has split the right-wing vote and could hand the race to Democratic Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. Once again the emergence of the Tea Party is proving something of a double-edged sword for Republicans.
Here are our top stories from today…
The majority of Americans don’t realize that when Social Security was started is was to help the “aged” worker during the last years of their life. Life expectancy in 1935 (presuming you survived childhood) was 58/men, 61/women. It was never calculated that people would live well into their 80′s & 90′s and collect SS. Those who think SS is a right at age 65 need more information. We have “evolved” into thinking this through government & media. You do not have the “right” to retire. You earn it through prudent financial responsibility and if you are lucky, some added SS benefits. Yes retirement age needs to be increased. I think to age 70-75. I am 55 and I am saying that. Additional taxes should be placed on income over 106k, but I think at a lower rate. Anyone who thinks SS is not in trouble is living in lala land. Entitlements are not a right. Handouts cultivate beggars and people without personal power.
Social Security and milking cows
An email by deficit commission co-chair Alan Simpson saying the Social Security retirement program has reached a point “where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits” is prompting calls for his resignation.
Ashley Carson, executive director of OWL which calls itself the voice of midlife and older women, said the email sent to her by Simpson was “insulting.” Other comments about “greedy geezers” by the former Republican senator fail to recognize that many older women rely on less than $12,000 a year in Social Security benefits, she said.
“We’re demanding for Mr. Simpson to step down as co-chair,” Carson said, adding that if he won’t go voluntarily, then President Barack Obama, who created the commission, should ask him to leave.
Simpson, who is known for his biting sense of humor, sent Carson a letter to “apologize for what I wrote,” saying he knew she cared “deeply about strengthening Social Security” and offering to meet with her.
“Over the last 40 years, I have had my size 15 feet in my mouth a time or two. To quote my old friend and colleague, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, when I make a mistake, ‘It’s a doozy!,’” Simpson added.
The email to Carson from Simpson was dated this week even though it was in response to a column she wrote in April, “Enough with the Pink Panthers Bit,” that criticized some of Simpson’s comments about advocacy groups fighting potential cuts to Social Security benefits.
Simpson tells her to “call when you get honest work.”
Ms. Carson — as a woman, I say: don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.
You fired the first salvo in your article, claiming Mr. Simpson made “disgusting” attempts at “ageism” and “sexism”, had a “record” of sexism and was “constantly bashing seniors.” He responded in an admittedly hot-headed EMAIL (ie. informal correspondence) which you obviously chose to release to the public. I don’t find him describing social security as a milk cow with “tits” (obviously he meant “teats”) sexist — it’s a farming term!
Frankly, you embarrass me as a woman because you make personal attacks on him, then he responds, and YOUR response is “Waaa! He’s mean! I don’t like it!! Off with his head!”
Also, you claim, “Social Security doesn’t contribute to the problem, and in fact runs an enormous surplus.” Really? Maybe this year, but where’s the reserve account? My homeowners’s dues runs at a surplus for this year as well, but that doesn’t mean we’ll have enough to pay for snow plow, driveway repair, staining and fixing the roof in years to come if we don’t set aside a reserve. Simple accounting.
He’s offered to meet with you to discuss further. I suggest you do something truly constructive for your advocacy group and go meet with him.
Simpson: Fix the deficit or your grandkids will pick grit with the chickens
Newly minted Republican deficit commissioner Alan Simpson has a message for Americans: if you don’t want your grandkids picking grit with the chickens, better ignore soundbite politics and get lawmakers to find real solutions to the deficit.
President Barack Obama Thursday named Simpson, a former Wyoming senator, and Erskine Bowles, the head of the University of North Carolina, to lead a bipartisan panel searching for ways to cut the deficit.
Obama called Simpson “a flinty Wyoming truth-teller.”
The former lawmaker quickly embarked on some truth-telling.
Appearing with Bowles on “PBS NewsHour,” Simpson was asked about Republicans who believed that tax cuts were needed now, even if they raised the deficit in the short term.
“I’m not smoking that same pipe,” he replied.
Both he and Bowles said everything would be on the table — from tax increases to program cuts — as they talked to members of both parties about how to bring down Washington’s record budget deficits.
I’m from California, and I’m glad Alan Simpson is gone from office. What an absolute derelict. I hope he still gets things, cause I sure wish he would read this.
From a man in Montana who – like the rest of us – has had enough! He points out in a very pointed manner a good example of why we need term limits for members of our congress.
Senator Alan Simpson calls seniors in America, “The Greediest Generation”…..And gets this letter from one of his constituents…..
Hey Alan,
Let’s get a few things straight…
1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY YEARS…
2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63)…
3. My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud…
4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age 67. NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to move the goalposts YET AGAIN…
5. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills…
6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why? Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay of YOUR debt…
To add insult to injury, you label us “greedy” for calling “bullshit” on your incompetence. Well, ‘Captain Bullshit,’ I have a few questions for YOU…
1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career?
2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?
3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?
4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?
It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your political co-conspirators who are “greedy”. It is you and they who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. That’s right, sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers. You know it, we know it, and you know that we know it.
And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch!
