Women Confront Deficit Commission Over Social Security

Women Confront Deficit Commission Over Social Security
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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Last month Former Senator and Deficit Commission co-chair Alan Simpson said this about Social Security, and by extension about government itself,

"We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits!"

Nice. We work and pay into Social Security all our lives, we pay our taxes, but when it comes time to retire our leaders say we're nothing more than freeloaders sucking off the tits of the "milk cow."

The Deficit Commission is meeting today and the National Organization for Women showed up and delivered 1,500 nipples to Simpson's commission. They called it "1500 Tits for an Ass."

"The Fiscal Commission should be led by someone who will actually try to address the federal budget deficit, instead of using it as an excuse to undermine Social Security by cutting benefits or raising the retirement age," O'Neill continues. "Alan Simpson is not that person."

Especially Women!

Social Security is especially important to women because women still are paid less than men and can't save as much for retirement, tend more than men to be in jobs without any pension (only 13 percent of women aged 65 or older currently receive a pension) and women are more likely to be on their own: single, widowed or divorced by retirement age. In fact 42 percent of women over age 62 relied on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income, compared to 28 percent of men. Any cuts in the program would hit women particularly hard.

Here is video from the delivery:

Social Security is involved in this because, even though the program is fully funded and by law is not allowed to borrow, which means it cannot contribute to the deficit, the program will one day need to draw on its huge trust fund, and the government will have to find ways to come up with the money owed.

This is all outrageous enough, but now word is leaking out that Republicans on the commission have refused to even discuss addressing the revenue shortfall with more revenue, and in fact are pressing for the commission to recommend even more tax cuts.

According to one source familiar with the deliberations, Republicans were even opposed to eliminating loopholes, exemptions, credits and other so-called "tax expenditures" unless the associated revenue increase could be used to lower capital gains and corporate income rates.

"Republicans have not even said that we should get any revenue from taxes," the source said. "Even tax expenditures. They appear to want to use the savings on tax expenditures to cut corporate taxes. So shared sacrifices -- except for large corporations who make out even better."

Simpson Not All That Is Unbalanced

The commissions members were biased toward the right going into this with many members having made previous statements showing they want to cut or privatize Social Security. In addition billionaire Pete Peterson, who is funding a campaign to privatize Social Security, is supplying staff to the commission.

Preempt The Commission!

So the results of a stacked commission are starting to show up. Congress needs to act to preempt the commission from cutting Social Security. Congress: Act Now To Preempt The Catfood Commission

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