Comments for AmericaSpeaks for Whom? at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://www.cepr.net Tue, 21 May 2013 18:39:58 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/Blogs/CEPR-Blog/americaspeaks-for-whom#comment-1196 I attended the event in Portland, OR yesterday with the 8 page CEPR analysis of the AmericaSpeaks materials in hand. When I suggested cutting health care spending in half by adopting a single payer system, I was told we needed to limit our recommendations to those in the options book. No outside information was to be considered. We were allowed, however, to make supplementary recommendations and single payer health care was a popular one nationally. I think we'll get more information quantifying the support some time in the future. I was most disappointed in the outcome of the Social Security portion of the discussion. Nowhere in the AmericaSpeaks packet could I find the information that Social Security is funded through 2044. Instead, we were reminded regularly that we needed to get to $1.2 trillion in savings. As a result, a slim majority expressed support for raising the eligibility age to 69. Eight-five percent recommended raising the limit on taxable earnings. There was some good news - support for both a carbon tax and securities transaction tax exceeded 60 percent and 61 percent thought the government should be doing more to strengthen the economy. Based on my discussions with others who attended, we felt frustrated by the limited time we had to understand and discuss very complex issues. The clock was always ticking. I think it would have made more sense to spend the day on only one of the categories with more complete information provided. Many people came to the event not having read the background materials or options book beforehand. It was almost impossible to understand the choices in the short time we had for each topic. Thank you for all the information you have provided on your website about the deficit, and particularly for the materials specifically designed to assist us with our participation in the event. - Debbie Aiona Sun, 27 Jun 2010 11:23:14 +0100