The Washington Post doesn't seem to want to take any prisoners in its on-going assault on Social Security. On October 31st, the paper ran a front page, above the fold, "news" article ("The debt fallout: How Social Security went 'cash negative' earlier than expected") falsely claiming that Social...
(473) Comments | Posted October 29, 2011 | 1:11 PM
The 1% is using the super-secret Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (a.k.a. the Super Committee), to reach directly into the pockets of the 99% and steal hundreds of billions of dollars from them. This committee has unprecedented power. It has been meeting behind closed doors for weeks. Finally, though,...
(148) Comments | Posted September 11, 2011 | 2:35 PM
A Social Security Administration employee's story about 9/11: "The most difficult, and at the same time most gratifying, work I did was to help relatives of 9/11 victims file for Social Security... One woman, in particular, stands out in my mind. Her husband was only in...
(5) Comments | Posted July 12, 2011 | 10:15 AM
Co-authord by Nancy J. Altman and Eric Kingson, co-chairs of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign (www.strengthensocialsecurity.org)
In a recent Politico column, Jon Cowan and Jim Kessler, respectively the president and senior vice-president of The Third Way, criticize "progressives" for opposing deals which cut Social Security benefits. They...
(10) Comments | Posted June 17, 2011 | 10:21 AM
Don't know about the rest of you 50+ folks, but it's time for me to burn my AARP card.
Have to start by saying that I like and respect many people who work for and serve as volunteers for AARP.
An article by Laura Meckler...
(3) Comments | Posted February 8, 2011 | 3:01 PM
Most Americans would not know the name Robert M. Ball, but all owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Starting with Social Security just four years after its enactment, he spent the next seven decades improving and defending the most successful and popular program in the nation's history. Friday, a...
(6) Comments | Posted December 17, 2010 | 6:39 PM
By Eric Kingson, Nancy Altman and John M. Cornman
Washington's policy elites just don't get Social Security. On Thursday, Congress passed the Obama-GOP compromise tax bill, replacing 15 percent of revenue dedicated to Social Security with borrowed money that will increase the federal deficit in 2011. On Dec. 3, a...
(11) Comments | Posted August 25, 2010 | 11:04 AM
Former Senator Alan Simpson should be removed from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. And so should Social Security, but for very different reasons.
Simpson should be sent packing because he is a crude bully whose disposition and biases render him totally inappropriate to co-chair this important...
(8) Comments | Posted June 25, 2010 | 11:34 PM
Co-authored by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson
In 1982, at the first meeting of the so-called Greenspan Commission, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "We are all entitled to our own opinion, but not to our own set of facts." Alan Simpson, the former Republican Senator...
(23) Comments | Posted June 16, 2010 | 2:03 PM
As Obama's Fiscal Commission prepares for its June 30 hearing, the Roosevelt Institute's New Deal 2.0 blog invited me to participate in its Social Security's Fiscal Fitness series, which examines the soundness of the program, its relationship to the federal deficit, and the vital role it...
(0) Comments | Posted April 22, 2010 | 2:06 PM
Co-authored by Eric Kingson, Nancy Altman and Lori Hansen
The President's Fiscal Commission is off to a very bad start. And it hasn't even met!
The rhetoric of the President's choices to chair this important commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, endangers Social Security and suggests insensitivity to 40 million...
(141) Comments | Posted November 11, 2011 | 4:41 PM