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Proposed Commission Is Fast Track to Cutting Social Security, Medicare
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Next week, the U.S. Senate will vote on legislation that a few years down the road could slash Social Security and Medicare benefits without any further debate or consideration by Congress.
The so-called Entitlement Reform Commission is the creation of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who plan to offer an amendment to create the commission to debt ceiling legislation.
This special appointed commission would supposedly create a blueprint to reduce the deficit by cutting vital government programs, including Social Security and Medicare. But under the Gregg-Conrad scheme, the panel’s recommendation would be “fast tracked” with no amendments allowed, just an up-or-down vote, and that, says the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM), is a process
designed to minimize Congress’ role in making these vital decisions. Or as some might argue, to provide political cover for those decisions.
In a new video, the group says backers of the commission have one goal in mind:
cutting these vital programs beyond what Congress has ever allowed, without a single congressional hearing. Without a full debate on the floor of Congress, no amendments, no give and take.
In a recent Huffington Post column, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), writes:
Current and near retirees will badly need their Social Security after the Wall Street boys’ machinations destroyed their home equity and retirement accounts. The vast majority of middle-income families will have very little other than Social Security to support them in retirement.
Baker, the NCPSSM and others point out that the Social Security did not contribute to the nation’s current economic woes and has been a lifeline for millions during this crisis. In a letter signed by the AFL-CIO, the Alliance for Retired Americans and more than two dozen other groups, the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations (LCAO) writes:
Social Security is not a part of the deficit problem nor is it part of an “entitlement crisis.” Its cost is projected to consume only 6.2 percent of GDP by 2030 and to remain slightly below that level for 50 more years.
Even as the banking and financial systems threatened to collapse, Social Security continued to provide a reliable economic lifeline to millions of children, disabled workers, retired workers, and spouses (including widowed and divorced spouses) dependent on those benefits. These benefits helped to offset lost earnings and stimulated the economy by maintaining purchasing power.
In December, 30 national groups, including the Campaign for America’s Future and the AFL-CIO, strongly urged Congress to oppose creation of such a commission.
Those supporting this circumvention of the normal process have stated openly the desire to avoid political accountability. Americans—seniors, women, working families, people with disabilities, young adults, children, people of color, veterans, communities of faith and others—expect their elected representatives to be responsible and accountable for shaping such significant, far-reaching legislation.
Read the full statement here. For more information, visit NCPSSM’s blog, Entitled to Know.
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8 Comments
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Once again, the living standards of working people are being attacked by the “friends of labor” Democratic Party, in control
of Congress and the Presidency.
But the fact is the Democratic Party (as well as the Republicans) are totally owned and controlled by the multi-national corporate and capitalist interests. The Bush/Cheney Republican foreign and domestic policy agendas to maximize the wealth and power of these crooks is now fully taken over by the
Democratic Party.
The same ruling elites own and control all mass media in this
country, including NPR and PBS, and thus working people will
never understand what is happening until it is too late.
To end this destruction of working people and even the destruction of the planet, all for profit, it is essential to break with the capitalist controlled two-party system. A socialst party that furthers the interests of working people, that takes no corporate money bribes, that creates a new mass media to inform and educate the people is essential.
It is not possible to “reform” or “change” or “bail-out” this
totally corrupt and bankrupt system of capitalist economics.
The United States is rapidly becoming a third world country,
a tiny 5 percent filthy rich and the rest of us reduced to impoverishment, slave-wages, dying of common diseases because we cannot afford health care, seeing our children receiving inadequate and impoverished education that condemns them to a life even worse than our own.
Every year, every day, our personal lives are getting worse.
We can survive only by a united economic and political struggle
of the vast majority, the working class. As bankrupt “leaders” forever procrastinate about the barbaric realities of gangster capitalism, our future prospects and that of humanity worldwide, diminish and become unbearable as it becomes impossible to survive.
Read the World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org
Ironically, the only reason Roosevelt created Social Security was to quiet the revolutionaries in California who had real ideas. I guess they now figure they can get away with anything, and don’t need to create a comprimise.
I knew PBS was messed up the seconed I heard this station is “locally” funded by Pepsi. I don’t where KCPT is suddenly broadcasting from, but the entire Kansas City metropolitan area dosen’t have a Pepsi distrubution center or plant of any kind. So that’s just blatent lying through there teeth BS. the only local drink producer is the Boulevard Brewing Company.
I wonder how many votes the Commission idea would achieve if all present and future members of Congress would be required to forego all retirement payments except Social Security.
The hypocrisy of this proposed Commission is that they never look at the corporate give aways the government gives the banks, manufacturers, corporate farmers, etc. Nor do they look at the billions that have been wasted on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq!
Congress needs to fast tract an end to corporate welfare including the military industrial complex!
Brother Wells, I agree we need a viable third party controlled by us, not the bosses!
Social security came about because America’s workers were on the march and we had the bosses scared. Medicare came about because Blacks and whites took to the streets everywhere against Jim Crow, and the Johnson administration wanted to do something popular to get workers to go along with their plan to turn all of SouthEast Asia into a slaughterhouse. Now, they are on the offensive, while Labor is in such a frenzied retreat, we aren’t even taking our weapons with us. These politicians and their corporate backers are convinced that the American working class no longer posesses any revolutionary potential whatsoever. A historical task is being forced on us, but we are still unwilling to recognize it. We must either prove them wrong or slink into oblivion.
Your absolutely right. (williamrayson on 15.01.2010 at 13:01) I think people have known that they/we need to cut the crap, get of their butts and do something before, but were either to scared, or felt that the risk of losing something either time or material wasn’t worth it. Hopefully, now that people really don’t have much to lose, (except a plutocracy) the fear factor is out.
I understand Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) being against regular working people. He ia a Republican, and they proved under George W Bush that they are ALL against regular working people. But where is this Democrat, Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) coming from? If we the people do not have all the Democrats supporting us we are in deep shi*, and we better organize real fast and defeat the bastar*s who are against us. That includes Democrats like Conrad!
Whenever the term “bipartisan” is being used, working people get screwed. We have a “two party” system where .1% of the population has two parties and 99.9% have absolutely nothing. They form these commissions to prevent any public debate. The only democracy we have at all is right here on the internet, and that’s only because they have not had a ‘bipartisan’ commission yet to close it down. We can start be democratizing our unions so we can produce new leadership that has no interest in being in bed with the bosses. Only when our vast numbers are mobilized can that happen. Its time to go back to basics and stop plalying their game by their rules.