Time to Put the Deficit Commission Out of Our Misery
by ilene - July 10th, 2010 10:54 am
Time to Put the Deficit Commission Out of Our Misery
Dean Baker, writing at Truthout and CEPR
See article on original website
It’s time to stop wasting the taxpayers’ money and shut down President Obama’s deficit commission. It is now clear that it has become a national joke.
One of the co-chairs of the commission is former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson. Simpson is often touted in the media for his plain-spoken man of the people ways. The media version doesn’t quite fit the facts. Mr. Simpson worked his way up to the Senate from being the son of a former Wyoming Senator.
When it comes to the issues being addressed by the commission Mr. Simpson is not really in touch with reality. In fact, he is so delusional that he thinks most seniors are as rich as he is. He has repeatedly said that he wants to cut Social Security benefits for people who are driving their Lexus into their gated community. That may be the world of Senator Simpson and his friends, but very few other seniors are in this boat. The typical household over age 65 gets by on less than $30,000 a year.
Senator Simpson not only has a tenuous grip on reality, he also has difficulty controlling himself. In fact, Senator Simpson has such difficulty controlling himself that the commission had to move their hearings to a secret location after Senator Simpson embarrassed himself in an interview with a 25-year-old reporter. Apparently, because they were worried that he would be unable to avoid embarrassing himself again in a future encounter, the commission decided to hide out in an undisclosed location where Simpson could be kept away from any reporters as he entered and left the meetings, which were already being carried on in secret.
The other co-chair of the commission is Erskine Bowles. In addition to his position as commission co-chair, Mr. Bowles also sits as a director of Morgan Stanley, one of the Wall Street banks that would have gone bankrupt without the taxpayer bailout two years ago. Last week Mr. Bowles revealed himself as a numerologist. (Numerologists are people who worship specific numbers.) He said that he thought that federal spending should be restricted to 21 percent of GDP, apparently expressing his reverence for the number “21.” [Bowles is also a member of the board of directors of General Motors, and North Carolina Mutual…