Remember this? Alan Simpson's expletive-filled rant against the respectful and well-informed Alex Lawson of Social Security Works?
ALAN SIMPSON: We're really working on solvency... the key is solvency
ALEX LAWSON: What about adequacy? Are you focusing on adequacy as well?
SIMPSON: Where do you come up with all the crap you come up with?
SIMPSON: We're trying to take care of the lesser people in society and do that in a way without getting into all the flash words you love dig up, like cutting Social Security, which is bullshit. We're not cutting anything, we're trying to make it solvent.
SIMPSON: It'll go broke in the year 2037.
That's just a tiny snippet of the abuse Lawson was subjected to, and you can read the transcript to see the rest. But the revelation in this wasn't really Simpson's capacity to be an asshole (fairly well established already) but just how profoundly committed Simpson is to drastically changing Social Security. Krugman provided a great debunking of Simpson's assertions in this post, in which he concluded "either (a) he isn’t willing to deal in good faith or (b) the zombies have eaten his brain. And in either case, there’s no point going on with this farce."
Another economist weighed in afterward, James K. Galbraith, one of the country’s most respected economists. He provided a blistering statement to the Fiscal Commission on behalf of "Americans for Democratic Action, an organization co-founded in 1949 by (among others) by Eleanor Roosevelt." The entire testimony [pdf] is erudite, intelligent, and critical.
But his special focus on Simpson, is particularly appropos to today's news.
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(Click on the snippets to see them in larger, more readable format.)
"A bipartisan commission should approach its task in a judicious, open-minded and dispassionate way. For this, the attitude and temperament of the leadership are critical.... With due respect, Senator Simpson's conduct fails that test." But in the last screen shot, Galbraith gets at what Krugman was addressing--Simpson's attitude toward Social Security and the fact that Social Security should not have been a topic for this commission in the first place.
I note from Chairman Simpson's conversation with Alex Lawson that the Commission has taken up the questions of the alleged "insolvency" of the Social Security system and of Medicare. If true, this is far outside any mandate of the Commission. Your mandate is strictly limited to matters relating to the deficit, debt-to-GPD ratio and fiscal stability of the U.S. Government as a whole. Social Security and Medicare are part of the government as a whole, so it is within your mandate to discussion those programs--but only in that context.
What this incident has done is to highlight two things--how Simpson's position as co-chair of this commission stacks the deck against Social Security, but more, whether the work they are doing is going to be valid at all. We've had strong indications that many of the commission's members aren't working in good faith (remember the plan to cut pay and benefits for soldiers instead of cutting defense contracting?). Simpson as co-chair, when he obviously has a problem with telling the truth about Social Security, exemplifies the credibility problem for the entire commission, a view that is shared by the AARP.