Catfood Commission FAIL

300 million tits?!!  The Catfood Commission is becoming more embarrassing by the day, Tell Obama: Get Rid Of Alan Simpson.

Alan Simpson believes that Social Security is “like a milk cow with 310 million tits,” according to an email he sent to the executive director of National Older Women’s League Tuesday morning. Simpson co-chairs the deficit commission, which is considering various proposals to cut Social Security benefits.

His email is peppered with exclamation points and condescension. At one point he urged Carson to read a certain graph, “which I hope you are able to discern if you are any good at reading graphs.”

Simpson concludes by implying that leading a major organization dedicated to the interests of middle-aged and elderly women is not “honest work.”

“If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security instead of just babbling into the vapors, let me know,” he writes. “And yes, I’ve made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know ‘em too. It’s the same with any system in America. We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!”

Those are some horrible things to say.  President Obama’s GOP co-chair is embarrassing him and destroying any credibility the commission may have hoped to create.  We pay into Social Security all our working lives and to try and paint working Americans as moochers when they retire and collect Social Security is despicable.  If Simpson had any self respect left he’d resign.

Be sure to sign the petition:

We have set up a petition online calling for his resignation. The National Council of Women’s Organizations is behind us and women’s leaders are lining up in support.

Please click here to sign the petition:
Remove Alan Simpson

Call the White House and let them know we want Alan Simpson’s resignation:
202-456-1111 or
E-mail them

[UPDATE]: AARP takes Simpson to task:

“Senator Simpson’s latest attack on Social Security is offensive for several reasons, particularly for belittling a bedrock program that is the foundation of family security for all generations. The vast majority of the 310 million Americans he insulted – particularly 156 million women and younger Americans for whom the traditional pension will be a relic of history – don’t have access to the type of traditional pension retirement security that Sen. Simpson has from his decades in Congress. Perhaps that’s why his comments demonstrate a woeful disconnect from or disinterest in the challenges facing many American families for whom Social Security is literally a lifeline.

“Sen. Simpson’s most recent departure from reality would be easy to dismiss if not for his position co-leading a Presidential commission that will likely recommend changes to Social Security. Sen. Simpson’s remarks not only cross the line of good judgment, but they undermine the serious work of the commission and give us little confidence the commission can fairly look at important programs such as Social Security.”

It’s time for Simpson to stop digging and leave the commission. If he stays, no matter the final product, it is irreparably damaged.

[UPDATE]: Krugman on Simpson, Fire Alan Simpson.

When you have a commission dedicated to the common good, and the co-chair dismisses Social Security as a “milk cow with 310 million tits,” you either have to get rid of him or admit that you’re completely, um, cowed by the right wing, that IOKIYAR rules completely.

And no, an apology won’t suffice. Simpson was completely in character here; it was perfectly consistent with everything else he’s said, and with his previous behavior. He has to go.

If Obama wants to fire up the Democratic base for November there are two things he can do right now to get that started. Fire Simpson and appoint Elizabeth Warren.

Social Security is extremely popular, why aren’t Democrats exploiting that?

Social Security, as it has been since it’s inception, is extremely popular.

Social Security turns 75 this week and remains an intensely popular program with voters of all ages, who strongly oppose cutting it to reduce the deficit, according to a new survey paid for by AARP and conducted by GfK Roper.

The poll, which was provided exclusively to HuffPost, finds that 85 percent of adults oppose cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit; 72 percent “strongly oppose” doing so.

Numbers like that simply don’t appear in surveys of almost any other national issue that is subject to debate.

The only thing that would get higher marks than this popular and well-run government insurance plan would be free money itself. So why aren’t the Democrats using this popularity and the GOP’s hate of and wish to destroy Social Security against them in this election year? More than likely because President Obama’s Catfood Commission is looking at weakening Social Security, for no good reason, and he doesn’t want to offend them.

Joe Conason essentially asks that question today.

The fractious and nebulous leadership of the Tea Party, a right-wing protest by the middle-aged and elderly, has never quite figured out how to talk about Social Security: a successful federal program despised by conservative ideologues but still beloved by older Americans, including those who identify with the movement. Although Democrats apparently lack the wit to exploit that latent contradiction, it could soon erupt in Colorado anyway — where the two freshly nominated Tea Party Republicans disagree sharply over the issue.

It’s really hard to understand why the Democrats, and President Obama, aren’t using Social Security and it’s popularity to their advantage and to the GOP’s detriment. This may be part of the reason, Social Security – A Divide Between DC And The Rest Of Us.

The DC-elite think that “the responsible thing to do” is to cut Social Security benefits. The public who they are supposed to represent overwhelmingly thinks that Social Security is one of the few remaining lifelines and must not be cut. The public strongly favors investing in rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, returning to taxation of the wealthy and corporations — especially Wall Street, and cutting back the enormous military budget as the key ways to address the budget deficit.

This morning the results of a new poll were announced, and politicians would do well to take note. The poll, A Research Study On Investment and Deficit Reduction, By Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Democracy Corps, Campaign for Amerca’s Future is described as follows:

Politicians will face major voter backlash if they advocate cuts in Social Security benefits or choose deficit reduction over job creation, according to a poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner commissioned by the Campaign for America’s Future and Democracy Corps, with support from MoveOn.org; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union.

I’l like to bring that first sentence out and repeat it so that it is clear: Politicians will face major voter backlash if they advocate cuts in Social Security benefits or choose deficit reduction over job creation.

Even a high paid campaign consultant should be able to figure out a campaign strategy from that.

Social Security is secure, WaPo goes mad

A Washington Post editorial today on Social Security lets the cat out of the bag:

Social Security is not a cause of the current or future debt…

The editorial is piss-poor at best, and Dean Baker gives is a proper burial here, Has the Washington Post Gone Mad?

The piece begins by telling readers that: “THIS YEAR, for the first time since 1983, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives from payroll taxes — $41 billion. This development is not an emergency, but it is a warning sign (emphasis in original).” It certainly is a warning sign. The falloff in Social Security tax revenue is a warning that the economy is seriously depressed due to the collapse of the housing bubble. Double digit unemployment leads to all sorts of problems, including the strains that it places on pension funds like Social Security.

In a sane newspaper the next sentence would be pointing out the urgent need to get back to full employment. Instead the Post tells readers:

“Too soon, this year’s anomaly will become the norm. By 2037, all the Social Security reserves will have been drained and the income flowing into the program will only be enough to pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits. If that sounds tolerable, consider that two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security as their main source of income. The average annual benefit is $14,000. Those who care most about avoiding such painful cuts ought to be working on ways to bolster the program’s finances — and soon, when the necessary changes will be less drastic than if action is postponed.”

Let’s see, it would be intolerable to have Social Security pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits in 2037, but one of the Post preferred cuts is raising the retirement age to 70,a 15 percent cut in benefits when fully phased in. So the Post thinks it would be just fine to have beneficiaries get 85 percent of scheduled benefits in 2037.

Not to mention if the retirement age goes up to 70, then people between 65 and 70 get their benefits cut by 100% for 5 years. 70 seems like an arbitrary number and we always have to keep in mind that to fix Social Security FOREVER all that needs to be done is to remove the payroll tax cap on wages.

The problem with the Catfood Commission, aka debt commission, dealing with Social Security is in the quote above. Social Security has nothing to do with the current or future debt so it should not be part of their purview. Dave Johnson says is better, Is It A Social Security OR A Deficit Commission?

Ever since President Obama set up the Deficit Commission all the talk has been about Social Security? Why?

Social Security is separate from the rest of the US budget, is separately funded, has a huge trust fund and, most important: Social. Security. Does. Not. Contribute. To. The. Deficit.

[...]

So is it a DEFICIT commission or is it a SOCIAL SECURITY commission? If it is a deficit commission, then stop all of this talk about cutting Social Security, please, and start talking about the deficit. Everyone knows the deficit was caused by tax cuts for the rich and the huge increases in military spending that occurred under Reagan and then again under Bush II. (Note – there is no more Soviet Union.)

Social Security works, is popular, and is secure for many years to come. It needs to be tweaked to make it secure forever. The WaPo needs to come back to sanity on this issue and stop being a demagogue on this issue.

[UPDATE]: Did I mention that Social Security works, Social Security Keeps 20 Million Americans Out of Poverty.

The Reagan, Bush, Bush bill is coming due

This puts the last 30 years in perspective. Voodoo economics was never about economics, it was a political ploy. We’ve let it go on too long and it’s time for the wealthy to start paying their fair share again. The political genius of supply-side economics. And it should start with ending the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy.

To understand modern Republican thinking on fiscal policy, we need to go back to perhaps the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy: “supply-side economics”. Supply-side economics liberated conservatives from any need to insist on fiscal rectitude and balanced budgets. Supply-side economics said that one could cut taxes and balance budgets, because incentive effects would generate new activity and so higher revenue.

The political genius of this idea is evident. Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch?

How did supply-side economics bring these benefits? First, it allowed conservatives to ignore deficits. They could argue that, whatever the impact of the tax cuts in the short run, they would bring the budget back into balance, in the longer run. Second, the theory gave an economic justification – the argument from incentives – for lowering taxes on politically important supporters. Finally, if deficits did not, in fact, disappear, conservatives could fall back on the “starve the beast” theory: deficits would create a fiscal crisis that would force the government to cut spending and even destroy the hated welfare state.

That’s it!! Voodoo/Trickle-on/”supply-side” economics was always about driving up deficits so high to force cutting social programs. That’s why Obama’s Catfood Commission is so horrible. And this idiotic political strategy continuing means bad news for our nation and the world economically.

Since the fiscal theory of supply-side economics did not work, the tax-cutting eras of Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush and again of George W. Bush saw very substantial rises in ratios of federal debt to gross domestic product. Under Reagan and the first Bush, the ratio of public debt to GDP went from 33 per cent to 64 per cent. It fell to 57 per cent under Bill Clinton. It then rose to 69 per cent under the second George Bush. Equally, tax cuts in the era of George W. Bush, wars and the economic crisis account for almost all the dire fiscal outlook for the next ten years (see the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

Today’s extremely high deficits are also an inheritance from Bush-era tax-and-spending policies and the financial crisis, also, of course, inherited by the present administration. Thus, according to the International Monetary Fund, the impact of discretionary stimulus on the US fiscal deficit amounts to a cumulative total of 4.7 per cent of GDP in 2009 and 2010, while the cumulative deficit over these years is forecast at 23.5 per cent of GDP. In any case, the stimulus was certainly too small, not too large.

The evidence shows, then, that contemporary conservatives (unlike those of old) simply do not think deficits matter, as former vice-president Richard Cheney isreported to have told former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill. But this is not because the supply-side theory of self-financing tax cuts, on which Reagan era tax cuts were justified, has worked, but despite the fact it has not. The faith has outlived its economic (though not its political) rationale.

So, when Republicans assail the deficits under President Obama, are they to be taken seriously? Yes and no. Yes, they are politically interested in blaming Mr Obama for deficits, since all is viewed fair in love and partisan politics. And yes, they are, indeed, rhetorically opposed to deficits created by extra spending (although that did not prevent them from enacting the unfunded prescription drug benefit, under President Bush). But no, it is not deficits themselves that worry Republicans, but rather how they are caused: deficits caused by tax cuts are fine; but spending increases brought in by Democrats are diabolical, unless on the military.

Indeed, this is precisely what Jon Kyl (Arizona), a senior Republican senator, has just said:

“[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to — if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans”

What conclusions should outsiders draw about the likely future of US fiscal policy?

First, if Republicans win the mid-terms in November, as seems likely, they are surely going to come up with huge tax cut proposals (probably well beyond extending the already unaffordable Bush-era tax cuts).

Second, the White House will probably veto these cuts, making itself even more politically unpopular.

Third, some additional fiscal stimulus is, in fact, what the US needs, in the short term, even though across-the-board tax cuts are an extremely inefficient way of providing it.

Fourth, the Republican proposals would not, alas, be short term, but dangerously long term, in their impact.

Finally, with one party indifferent to deficits, provided they are brought about by tax cuts, and the other party relatively fiscally responsible (well, everything is relative, after all), but opposed to spending cuts on core programmes, US fiscal policy is paralysed. I may think the policies of the UK government dangerously austere, but at least it can act.

This is extraordinarily dangerous. The danger does not arise from the fiscal deficits of today, but the attitudes to fiscal policy, over the long run, of one of the two main parties. Those radical conservatives (a small minority, I hope) who want to destroy the credit of the US federal government may succeed. If so, that would be the end of the US era of global dominance. The destruction of fiscal credibility could be the outcome of the policies of the party that considers itself the most patriotic.

In sum, a great deal of trouble lies ahead, for the US and the world.

It’s time for all of this to end.

The new “Chicken Hawks”

Dean Baker nails it, The Budget Deficit Chicken Hawks.

Most people are familiar with the concept of “chicken hawks.” Chicken hawks are the politicians who are anxious to send other people to risk their lives in war, but somehow managed to avoid service when they had the opportunity to fight themselves. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney and former President George W. Bush are the leading members of the chicken hawk society.

It turns out that we have a similar story with budget policy, where there appears to be a large contingent of budget deficit chicken hawks. The deficit hawks have been filling the news lately. These are the folks who are yelling that something terrible will happen if we don’t reduce the deficit. Most of them seem to have missed the fact that something terrible is now happening. We have almost 15 million people unemployed and 9 million underemployed, with several million facing the loss of their home in the next few years.

People of all ages are seeing their lives wrecked by a economic disaster that was entirely preventable, if the folks running economic policy were not too incompetent to notice an $8 trillion housing bubble. In fact, one of the reasons that this bubble did not get noticed was that, even before the bubble burst – creating large deficits – the deficit hawks were running around yelling about the deficits. These deficit hawks were able to get far more attention for their whining than the people who were warning about the dangers posed by the housing bubble.

Now that we have seen the collapse, rather than supporting action to get the economy back on its feet, the deficit hawks are again yelling about the long-term deficit. But what is really striking is that many of the people who whine loudest about the deficit are the most reluctant to take steps to reduce the deficit – at least when it involves powerful interest groups.

[...]

It is not only Wall Street that is protected by the deficit chicken hawks. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries can also count on the deficit chicken hawks. As all budget analysts know, the country’s long-term budget problem is due to our broken health care system. We pay more than twice as much per person as the average in other wealthy countries.

But the deficit hawks are scared to talk about fixing the health care system. This would hurt the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and other powerful interest groups. When America Speaks came to health care, they said reform was off limits. They only wanted participants to talk about cutting Medicare and Medicaid. The elderly and the poor don’t have powerful lobbies like the industry groups.

Basically, the deficit chicken hawks want deficit reduction, but they only want it to be at the expense of the elderly and the poor, hence, their attacks on Social Security and Medicare. Of course, the public is not anxious to go along with gutting the programs on which they and their parents depend, which is why the deficit chicken hawks prefer to do their work through commissions that hold secret meetings.

The deficit chicken hawks also don’t have much commitment to honesty. When America Speaks reported its results to the public and President Obama’s deficit commission, it noted that one cut to Social Security, raising the retirement age, got majority support from participants. However, it turns out that this result was based on a software error. When the error was corrected, support fell to 39 percent.

Remarkably, America Speaks did not have the integrity to publicly acknowledge and correct this mistake. It just quietly changed the number on its web site. This is the sort of behavior we should expect from deficit chicken hawks, who want to attack the programs on which so many ordinary working people depend, while protecting the interests of the rich and powerful.

There is no crisis or deficit when it comes to Social Security. Every discussion about the deficit must start and end with letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire.

The deficit now and in the future, Social Security has nothing to do with it

Our deficit issue(s) in this country can be explained and fixed very easily. But one thing must be pointed out from the beginning. There is no crisis when it comes to Social Security.

Social Security now or in the future has nothing to do with the deficit.  Doing anything to Social Security or it’s benefits now or in the future will do nothing to fix our current deficit problems.

In the short-term our deficit is caused largely by three things. As this graph shows those are – the Bush Tax Cuts, two wars, and the economic slow down.

In the long-term the deficit problem is caused by the explosion in the cost of health care. Without some form of cost control, like a public option, health insurance corporations will not cut costs. The CBO released a letter yesterday stating that a public option for health care would cut the budget by $68 billion through 2020.

CBO estimates that the public plan’s premiums would be 5 percent to 7 percent lower, on average, than the premiums of private plans offered in the exchanges. The differences between the premiums of the public plan and the average premiums of private plans would vary across the country because of geographic differences in the plans’ relative costs. Those differences in premiums would reflect the net impact of differences in the factors that affect all health insurance premiums, including the rates paid to providers, administrative costs, the degree of benefit management applied to control spending, and the characteristics of the enrollees.

[...]

The bulk of those budgetary effects would occur in the second half of the decade; the savings estimated for 2019 are about $14 billion. Although CBO and JCT have not yet extended to 2020 the models they use to estimate insurance coverage, the proposal would probably reduce the federal budget deficit by about $15 billion in that year, bringing the total budgetary savings through 2020 to about $68 billion. As discussed in CBO’s letter, those estimates are smaller than figures that have been previously reported regarding the savings from establishing a similar public plan because those previous estimates were related to legislation that differed in a number of ways from what was enacted.

It is obvious to anyone who takes the time to learn about the issue that Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit now or in the future. Also watch these tow videos. First this one from Strengthen Social Security.

There was also panel from yesterday at Netroots Nation titled “Obama’s Social Security ‘Death Panel’”. (Link to video here – scroll through related videos until you see the title). Here’s a liveblog of the panel. And

Hayes compares deficiti hysterics to Iraq War debate

Chris Hayes in The Nation, Deficits of Mass Destruction, compares the false and misleading hysteria currently being spouted by the trad-med and elites to the misinformation and lies leading up to the Iraq War.

Perhaps the most egregious aspect of the selling of the Iraq War was its false pretext. It never really was about weapons of mass destruction, as Paul Wolfowitz admitted. WMDs were just “what everyone could agree on.” So it is with deficits. Conservatives and their neoliberal allies don’t really care about deficits; they care about austerity—about gutting the welfare state and redistributing wealth upward. That’s the objective. Deficits are just what they can all agree on, the WMDs of this manufactured crisis. Senator John Kyl of Arizona, speaking on Fox, has come out and admitted as much. All new spending increases must be offset, he said, but “you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.” So there you have it.

Remember that the Iraq War might have been prevented had more Congressional Democrats stood up to oppose it. Instead, many of those who privately knew the entire enterprise was a colossal disaster in the making buckled to right-wing pressure and pundit hawks and voted for it. That mistake is being repeated. Despite White House economists’ full realization of the need for stimulus in the face of astronomically high unemployment, the New York Times has reported that the political minds inside the White House, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, have decided that the public has no appetite for increased spending. “It’s my job to report what the public mood is,” Axelrod explained. He then showed up on ABC’s This Week to wave the white flag, saying that the president would continue to press to extend unemployment benefits; conspicuously omitted was any mention of aid to state governments, which had originally been included in the president’s June letter to Congress asking for a new stimulus package.

There is hope, however: the public is nowhere near as obsessed with the deficit as are those in Washington. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans support “additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy,” with 38 percent opposed. A Hart Research Associates poll published in June showed that two-thirds of Americans favor continuing unemployment benefits. There is also very little public appetite for “entitlement reform,” a k a cutting Social Security.

The lesson of the Iraq War is that over the long haul, good politics and good policy can’t be separated. If the White House is tempted to support bad policy in the short term because it seems less risky politically, it should give John Kerry a call and ask him how that worked out for him with Iraq.

It is eerily similar. I hadn’t seen “The Wizard of Oz” in a while. My wife and kids had it on a week or so ago…”Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”.

The effects of the Catfood Commission – reduced benefits, higher retirement age

While there’s quite a bit of talk about slashing Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age, there’s very little talk about what that will look like.  There’s also, almost never, any talk about what Social Security provides for those that aren’t of retirement age, such as for the disabled and survivor benefits.  Well here’s some.

Proposals to Cut Social Security Benefits will Significantly Impact Retirement Income for Low-and Middle-Class Retirees. (Tip to AFL-CIO blog).

The analysis of the proposed cuts show:

* The most frequently suggested PPI formula would imply cuts in benefits of 6.2 percent for a household in the in the middle income quintile between the ages of 45-49 in 2007 and 9.6 percent for a household in the middle quintile between the ages of 40 and 44 in 2007
* Raising the normal retirement age 70 in 2036 would result in a 4.0 percent reduction in benefits for workers between the ages of 50 and 54 in 2007 and a 10.0 percent reduction for workers between the ages of 40-44
* Reducing the COLA by 1.0 percent would result in a benefits cut of 12 percent for a retiree at age 75 and more than 20 percent at age 85
* For retirees in the bottom income quintile at age 85 who were between the ages of 55 and 59 in 2007, reducing the COLA by 1.0 percent implies a 14.6 percent reduction in income and a cut of 16. 5 percent for retirees in the bottom quintile at age 85 between the ages of 40-44.

“The vast majority of near-retirees will rely on Social Security for most of their income in retirement,” said Baker. “All of these proposals will result in significant cuts in income for low- and/or middle-income families.”

That’s horrible when you consider that raising the cap would make all of this unnecessary.

Here’s more from Crooks and Liars on what this would look like, Catfood Commissioner: ‘Fiscal Cancer’ Consuming The Economy. Here’s A Crying Towel, Erskine!

Dean Baker destroys the Catfood Commission

The Deficit Commission Refuses to Talk to Anyone Who Knows About the Econom.

Erskine Bowles, the co-chair of President Obama’s Deficit Commission and a director of the Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley, claimed that the current economic crisis (which is projected to add more than $4 trillion to the national debt) was “largely unforeseen.” This is not true. Competent economists saw the crisis as an inevitable outcome of the housing bubble. It is remarkable that the deficit commission seems to be relying exclusively on economists who could not see this $8 trillion bubble, the collapse of which wrecked the economy.

The commission also does not appear to be considering any measures that would challenge powerful interest groups like the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, highly-paid medical specialists, or the Wall Street banks. Rather than incur the wrath of these powerful interest groups by reining in medical expenses or reducing the rents earned by Wall Street bankers, the commission seems intent on taking back Social Security and Medicare benefits for ordinary workers. The reporters covering the commission should be reporting on the failure of the commission to follow its mandate in this respect.

The idiocy of the Catfood Commission

The “Catfood Commission”, otherwise known as the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, has by most accounts been focused on blaming Medicare and Social Security for all of our deficit problems while ignoring the main drivers of our deficit – the Bush tax cuts, two foreign wars, and the economic downturn.  (You can see the chart in this previous post, What has caused the deficits? And how to end them, to see the evidence).  What is really disheartening about this commission is the President’s, and his administration’s, willingness to play into a right wing conservative mythical frame, that could enable the destruction of both Medicare and Social Security the main goal of the GOP since their inceptions.

Because of the commissions focus on gutting social programs that benefit the neediest in our country to the great benefit of the wealthy it’s becomes harder by the day to take the commission and the President’s focus on the deficit serious.  Especially when every sane economist – yes even deficit hawks – agree that in the short-term we should not be concerned with deficits. And Social Security is not a cause of the deficit.

Now, seriously. How can any intelligent person convince themselves that the Obama administration isn’t backing this? The commission is stacked with deficit hawks; the national deficit is on track to be more fiscally sound if they let the Bush tax cuts expire; and Social Security, which is a tax-transfer program, doesn’t have a damned thing to do with the deficit.

But deficit hawks aren’t grounded in reality. They just like inflicting pain on the people who didn’t cause our economic crisis.

The main problem is that deficit reduction is not what our country or the economy needs right now. We need massive, and I mean massive, deficit spending to create jobs and get us out of this recession. That’s why when Republicans make stupid statements like this, “…no nation has ever borrowed and spent its way to prosperity“, they must be shown for the idiots they are. The long term deficit can’t be fixed without getting back to around 5% unemployment, that won’t be fixed without deficit spending in the near-term to create jobs. And the Catfood Commission can’t do anything to change or fix that.

Watch This!