Later On

Part of the overall decline of the US, I believe. Greenwald:

The President’s Deficit Commission is designed to be as anti-democratic and un-transparent as possible.  Its work is done in total secrecy.  It is filled with behind-the-scenes political and corporate operatives who steadfastly refuse to talk to the public about what they’re doing.  Its recommendations will be released in December, right after the election, to ensure that its proposals are shielded from public anger.  And the House has 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 Social Security — can occur only if they are removed as far as possible from democratic accountability.  As the economist James Galbraith put it when testifying before the Commission in July:

Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy. . . . First, most of your meetings are secret, apart from two open sessions before this one, which were plainly for show. There is 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 Social Security 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 has accepted support from Peter G. Peterson, a man who has for decades conducted a relentless campaign to cut Social Security and Medicare, raises the most serious questions.

That’s why Commission co-chair Alan Simpson — with his blunt contempt for Social Security and 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 recent 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 — to his genuine credit — has been aggressively engaging critics, making it impossible to ignore what the Commission is really up to.  

In June, he walked out of a Commission meeting and proceeded to engage in an amazingly informative, 8-minute colloquy streaming in real time on the front page of FDL, making unambiguously clear that the Commission is working to cut Social Security benefits.  And over the last several weeks, he has used increasingly flamboyant rhetoric to attack both defenders of Social Security and the program itself, as well as even attacking wounded veterans for failing to sacrifice enough by giving up some of their benefits.  Whatever one thinks of Simpson’s remarks, I prefer his public, engaged candor to the extreme, arrogant secrecy of his fellow Members.

Throughout last year, a few lone, progressive voices were sounding the alarm that the core goal of the President’s Commission was to enable cuts in Social Security, but the Commission was operating in such stealth, and the idea was so inconceivable that Obama would lead cuts in Social Security, that few believed it.  The Democrats’ plan was clearly to try to win the midterm election by telling people that the GOP wanted to attack Social Security and the Democrats would protect it, only to turn around once the election was over and then enact the Commission’s Social Security reductions.  Simpson’s comments have changed all that.  Now, even the hardest-core Democratic loyalists are objecting to the Party’s plan; here is lifelong Party operative Bob Shrum, of all people, blowing the whistle on what the Democrats are trying to do with this Commission:

So why not campaign all-out, in [Tip] O’Neill’s plainspoken way, against a GOP that is disloyal to the most successful — and most popular — social program in American history?

Because Democrats have been disarmed by the president’s deficit reduction commission, which plainly intends to propose Social Security cuts.

Rather than allow such cuts to be greased through the lame duck session of a decimated Democratic Congress, or passed under cover of "bipartisanship" in a decidedly more Republican one next year, shouldn’t the case be stated and debated before the election? (Right now, Social Security is treated as the issue that dare not speak its name.) There is also the question of Democratic identity: What does the party stand for if not Social Security? And then there is the question of Democratic stupidity: Qualified and muted comments by Democrats in effect suggesting that Democrats won’t endanger Social Security as much as the other guys will can only further pave the road to defeat.

The president’s deficit reduction commission was a response to a series of popular myths — that the federal deficit is a root cause of our economic distress and that Social Security is a root cause of the deficit. . . . So the deficit commission has targeted Social Security, which has nothing to do with the deficit.

Simpson’s comments have triggered a parade of similar evidence.  Key Democratic House member Chris Van Hollen pointedly refused to vow that Democrats would vote against Social Security cuts when pressed by MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur, and several progressive pundits — including TPM’s Brian Beutler and Ezra Klein — this week documented what has been clear for some time:  that the Commission is stacked with ideologically conservative and corporatist appointments from both parties likely to recommend cuts in Social Security.

But perhaps the most significant result of Simpson’s candor is . . .

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