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The last thing I want is for Alan Simpson to depart from the Catfood Commission. He is such a perfect embodiment of it's ignorant, mean-spirited mendacity that if he didn't exist, atheists would be praying 24/7 for his creation.
Yet, I also think that it's great that people are calling for his ouster. It's the best possible way to bring heat to bear on the commission itself. Could it go too far, and get rid of him, leaving the commission free to do its dirty work? Possibly, given his latest outrage, attacking veterans:
The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama's deficit commission said Tuesday....
"The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess," said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.
But, that's the kind of warm and cuddly guy that Simpson's always been. And my bet remains that the more we push to get him ousted, the more he'll dig his heels in--and more importantly, the more Obama will do the same. While this dynamic usually works against us, this time could be different. This time it could work to heighten the public awareness of the grand theft being planned, which could in turn make it much harder to pull off.
Laurence Lewis at DKos makes a most pertinent point:
It was just about a year ago that we were hearing stories about President Obama's intention to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Again. The president's most ardent defenders insisted that we shouldn't listen to unnamed and anonymous sources, and should instead wait and see what happened. And then when he escalated, pretty much as had been reported, we were told that it was the right move, and we should support it. The same dynamic played out with the public option. For months, while it became increasingly apparent that the president wouldn't fight for a public option, we were told that he kept saying he supported one, and we didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. When the public option was punted, we were told that it never had been all that important, anyway, and the health insurance bill that was passed was all kinds of wonderful, so we should just be appreciative and grateful.
The same dynamic is playing out with the Catfood Commission. We are being told not to worry, and that Social Security won't be gutted, and it's just an advisory committee, and on and on. And it seems likely that there is an element of truth in the defense, but only an element. It doesn't seem likely that Social Security will be gutted, but don't be surprised if it is incrementally stripped down. An older retirement age. Less benefits. Things that can be defended by those reflexively inclined to defend. We'll hear that it wasn't as bad as we'd feared, so we should accept it and support it. But as with the incremental rollback of reproductive rights that was folded into the health insurance bill, it's the momentum that will matter most. Democrats buying into Republican framings. Democrats leading a movement backwards. Democrats refusing to stand on principle, on issues that should be core Democratic principles.
Simpson's presence in the mix needs to be seen in the light of this now-clear pattern of betrayal by Barack Obama and his allies. (Still think that sort of language is too tough? Check out glacierpeaks in quick hits pointing to a UK Guardian commentary on Tony Blair's just-released memoirs, titled "Blair the zealot: a mindset closer to a pathology than politics".)
Simpson's presence is a strategic gift to us, and the gift is only as good as our attacks on him make it.
So, by all means, let's call for Simpson to go. The worst that could happen is that he's actually forced to leave. And then we'll just have to go after all the rest of them, calling them "Simpson clones."
Which they are.
p.s. Simpson's latest embarassing dust-up with a real Social Secruty expert is chronicled by Ryan Grim at Huffpo: "Alan Simpson Calls Recipient Of Angry Letter". The expert is Merton Bernstein:
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Merton Bernstein told HuffPost that he picked up the phone Tuesday night and the caller told him: "You don't know who I am."
"Oh, yes I do," Bernstein said he told Simpson. Bernstein, who was a senior consultant to the 1983 commission that reformed Social Security, said he used the opportunity to try to educate Simpson.
The commission, chaired by Alan Greenspan, reformed Social Security so that it could handle the onslaught of the pending baby boom retirements. Simpson was unaware of what the commission had done, said Bernstein.
"That's not true," Bernstein said of Simpson's claim -- which he has made in the past and repeated to Bernstein -- that the commission did not account for baby boomers. "They very clearly and explicitly addressed that issue. That's why they built in a surplus." Bernstein told him that he was in the room with Bob Ball and other commission leaders when they made the decision to account for the pending wave of retirements.
"Then why are they in such trouble now?" Simpson responded. Bernstein responded that they are not in fact in trouble today. The surplus is now over $2 trillion and is projected to reach $4.6 trillion. |
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