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In his column today, titled "the right's stealthy coup," E.J. Dionne discussed the takeover of the Republican Party by its extreme right-wing. For example, he noted that the Republican Supreme Court justices appear to be taking positions that even President Reagan's solicitor general considers absurd.
Dionne then shows how effective the right has been in their stealthy coup effort when he refers to "a vote on the deficit-reduction proposals offered by the commission headed by former Sen. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton."
Of course there were no deficit-reduction proposals offered by the commission. The commission never issued any proposals. The by-laws of the commission clearly state:
"The Commission shall vote on the approval of a final report containing a set of recommendations to achieve the objectives set forth in the Charter no later than December 1, 2010. The issuance of a final report of the Commission shall require the approval of not less than 14 of the 18 members of the Commission."
There was no vote taken by December 1 on any plan. There was an informal poll of members on December 3, 2010. This poll found that 11 of the 18 commission members supported the proposal put forward by the commission co-chairs, Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson.
This means that the proposals that Dionne refers to as coming from the commission are in fact just proposals from the co-chairs. They cannot accurately be called proposals from the commission.
Remarkably, the right is using public money to advance this deception. The commission's website inaccurately posted the report of the co-chairs as a report of the commission. Showing an extraordinary sense of irony, they titled the report, "the moment of truth."
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we lose the propaganda war because by arguing against their lies small details, we give credibility to the big lie.
the trouble with simpson - bowles is not that the committee didn't actually endorse it. the trouble is that it is founde on the iie that Social Security is a cause of the deficits.
SS has nothing to do with the deficits. (The payroll tax holiday IS contributing to the deficit. But the tax holiday is NOT Social Security. It is the opposite of Social Security: a clever plan to destroy SS by changing it from "worker funded" to "deficit funded."
Moreover SS is not going broke. Not even in 30 years. It can pay benefits greater in real value than today's forever. If the workers 30 years from now, who are going to live longer than their grandparents, will want to keep up with their own increasing standard of living, they would need to raise their own payroll tax one half of one tenth of one percent per year... about forty cents per week. This will give them a monthly benefit worth 50% more than today's...
And if the workers continue to pay for their own benefits, eventually the people will understand why SS can never go broke, and why it can never add to the deficit.