Obama's Social Security Answer Leaves Democrats Utterly Baffled

Obama, DickDurbin, NancyPelosi, all have "embraced" SimpsonBowles.  

Obama's DeficitCommission was designed to be as anti-democratic and untransparent as possible.  Its work is done in total secrecy.  It's filled with behind-the-scenes political and corporate operatives who refused to talk to the public about what they're doing.  Its recommendations were released in December2010, right after the election, to ensure that its proposals are shielded from public anger.   And the House passed a non-binding resolution calling for an up-or-down/no-amendments vote on the Commission's recommendations, long considered the key tactic to ensuring its enactment. 

The whole point of the Commission is that the steps which Washington wants to take -- particularly cuts in popular social programs, such as SocialSecurity -- can occur only if they're removed as far as possible from democratic accountability.  As the economist JamesGalbraith put it when testifying before the Commission in July: 

Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy. . . . First, most of your meetings are secret. There's no justification for secret meetings on deficit reduction. No secrets of any kind are involved. . . . 

Second, that some members of the commission are proceeding from fixed, predetermined agendas. Third, that the purpose of the secrecy is to defer public discussion of cuts in SocialSecurity and Medicare until after the 2010 elections. You could easily dispel these suspicions by publishing video transcripts of all of your meetings on the Internet, and by holding all future meetings in public . . . 

Conflicts of interest constitute the fourth major problem. The fact that the Commission's accepted support from PetePeterson, a man who has for decades conducted a relentless campaign to cut SocialSecurity and Medicare, raises the most serious questions.

That's why Commission co-chair AlanSimpson -- with his blunt contempt for SocialSecurity and other benefit programs (such as aid to disabled veterans) and his acknowledged eagerness to slash them -- has done the country a serious favor.  His outbursts have unmasked this Commission and shed light on its true character.  Unlike his fellow Commission members, who imperiously dismiss public inquiries into what they're doing as though they're annoying and inappropriate, Simpson's been aggressively engaging critics, making it impossible to ignore what the Commission's really up to.
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