It's time for Obama to shut down the 'entitlements' commission.
Look:
This commission has truly lost its way.
The co-chairs have exposed themselves to be 1) a Democrat who doesn't understand how Social Security works and 2) a Republican who hates Social Security.
Whatever legitimacy this commission had is gone.
Close the doors, Mr. President.
Time for this bad idea to go.
Before people start thinking that you 1) don't understand how Social Security works and 2) hate it regardless.
People who do not fundamentally understand this program and who do not support it have no business being on a Presidential commission designed to reform it.
Unless the purpose is to destroy it.
Every statement made by "Erskine" Bowles and Alan Simpson suggests that big cuts will be demanded to the most healthy, the best-funded, the most successful, the most popular and most valuable government program to be assembled during the last eighty years.
Every whisper in the Beltway indicates that a huge cut to benefits in the form of raising eligibility age is in the commission plan.
Every rumor circulating around the press says that the commission proposes to means-test the progam, something that will introduce a cancer into public support for the program.
What are we doing here?
Social Security is healthy, well-funded, successful and popular.
(And another question: Why does a President whose party controls both houses of Congress create a commission stocked full of anti-Social Security radicals from the other party?)
It is time for the commission to go.
It's a process failure.
Retire the commission and take changes to Social Security off the table now.
By request, in case anyone wants to call the White House and share an opinion on this, the number is 202-456-1111 (TTY/TDD, 202-456-6213).