The Cunning Catfood Commission
By Pat Racimora on August 29, 2010 at 11:30 AM in Current Affairs
We like to believe that if we could just get Congress under control by voting out the bums and replacing them with people who give a damn about others besides themselves we would be OK. What we can’t see is that huge powers have been put into the hands of czars and commissions that work in secret. (Remember that transparency pledge? Well forget that one too.)
A case in point is the so-called “Catfood Commission,” working covertly to mess with Social Security. The cynical nickname derives from the possiblity that before this group’s work is done, older Americans will be reduced to eating pet food.
Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, who used to be among Obama’s Social Security advisors, let the cat out of the bag in Harvard’s Nieman Watchdog. Here is a bit from their article, Has Obama created a Social Security ‘death panel’?
President Obama and the leadership in Congress have delegated enormous, unaccountable authority to 18 unrepresentative, inordinately wealthy individuals. The 18 individuals are meeting regularly, in secret, behind closed doors, until safely beyond this year’s mid-term election. If they reach agreement, their proposal will be voted on in December by a lame duck Congress, without the benefit of open hearings and deliberations in the pertinent committees and without the opportunity for open debate and amendment on the floors of the House and Senate. Despite the speed and lack of accountability, the legislation will affect, in substantial ways, every man, woman, and child in this nation
Dan Froomkin writing this week for the Huffington Post voiced similar concerns:
Members of President Obama’s deficit commission huddled behind closed doors Wednesday despite pleas from the left and right that they hold all their meetings in public.
The move only heightens suspicion that rather than forging a national consensus on future spending priorities, the commission’s work will consist of backroom dealings in which members of the Washington aristocracy find high-minded excuses for cutting the social safety net.
So, what we have is a group of people who have no empathy for or understanding of the task they have been empowered to undertake. Former Senator Alan Simpson , a grumpy senior-basher despite being old as dirt himself, complains that Social Security’s assets are no more than “a stack of IOU’s.” Simpson fails to add that what you and I put in from of our pay checks has been unabashedly raided over the years to pay for all sorts of other things. Simspon, regrettably a co-chair of the Catfood Commission, also got into hot water from feminists and some lawmakers for comparing Social Security to a “milk cow with 310 million tits.”
Here’s the thing: Social Security remains solvent with a huge surplus despite being ransacked repeatedly. Social Security is not part of our deficit problem. It has always paid for itself. However, it is true that the solvency is not going to last forever, due to such factors as a declining birth rate and folks living longer.
One “solution” is to raise the retirement age, an idea with a moral flaw as things currently stand. Until there is no age discrimination in hiring this “solution” will only heap hardship on to workers who have lost their jobs along the way. Raising taxes is, of course, another solution, as if we have more to spare. Targeting only the wealthy by eliminating their benefits is presumably on the table, but it is a little unsettling to deny people what they already contributed, perhaps during a time when they could have really used those extra dollars. But I digress. This commission is unlikely to deprive the now-wealthy a single penny.
I believe that Social Security is being attacked now because it’s easy pickin’s and the Administration thinks people are stupid and confused. But I have a hunch that the old cats will strike back—so watch out. Claws stay sharp forever.
by Ronald Scott
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