Alan Simpson Again Peddles Lies About Social Security - FDL

[WillyT]

Alan Simpson Again Peddles Lies About Social Security
By: David Dayen
Wednesday September 1, 2010 2:08 pm

<snip>

Apparently Alan Simpson has a habit of writing letters to critics and adding charts and graphs that don’t say what he thinks they say. Witness yet another recipient of his scorn, one we previously didn’t know about:

Merton Bernstein told HuffPost that he picked up the phone Tuesday night and the caller told him: “You don’t know who I am.”

“Oh, yes I do,” Bernstein said he told Simpson. Bernstein, who was a senior consultant to the 1983 commission that reformed Social Security, said he used the opportunity to try to educate Simpson.

The commission, chaired by Alan Greenspan, reformed Social Security so that it could handle the onslaught of the pending baby boom retirements. Simpson was unaware of what the commission had done, said Bernstein.

“That’s not true,” Bernstein said of Simpson’s claim — which he has made in the past and repeated to Bernstein — that the commission did not account for baby boomers. “They very clearly and explicitly addressed that issue. That’s why they built in a surplus.” Bernstein told him that he was in the room with Bob Ball and other commission leaders when they made the decision to account for the pending wave of retirements.

“Then why are they in such trouble now?” Simpson responded. Bernstein responded that they are not in fact in trouble today. The surplus is now over $2 trillion and is projected to reach $4.6 trillion.

He really has no concept of anything that doesn’t fit his pre-digested “milk cow with 300 million tits” talking points. Simpson believes that Social Security is “in trouble” because… he believes it’s in trouble. There’s not much else to it. He sees horrors ahead in the trustee’s report, despite it showing full benefits can be paid until 2037, and that the program IMPROVED slightly in long-term financial shape over the past year, despite the unemployment crisis.

Simpson again delivered to a critic the Stephen Goss report on Social Security, which is basically a rehash of the trustee’s report, and which I went over in detail here: http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/08/26/simpsons-appeal-to-authority-undermines-his-case-for-social-security-cuts-shows-his-bias/ He just looked at that presentation as a confirmation of his own biases. As the director of the Alliance for Retired Americans correctly noted, Simpson wouldn’t be able to get on a jury with such a bias, let alone adjudicated the most successful retirement program in American history.

Simpson doesn’t understand administrative costs, either:

Bernstein also tried to explain to Simpson that his proposals to means-test benefits to restrict them to low-income seniors would not save money because of the high administrative costs of such an effort. “He didn’t seem to understand that,” said Bernstein.

This isn’t rocket science, either. You would have to account for not only income at retirement but personal net worth or overall average income, depending on the parameters. Basically, you’d have to set up a parallel IRS to poke into someone’s financial history. Let’s just say that the HAMP experience makes me highly resistant to that possibility.

The report from the Cat Food Commission should be out within three months. Lord help us.

<snip>

Link: http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/09/01/alan-simpson-again-peddles-lies-about-social-security/

:kick:

[gratuitous]

1. Alan Simpson: The Man the Obama Administration Wants

I'm beginning to not care at all about any of the excuses proffered for Mr. Simpson and his never-ending rampage against the U.S. citizenry. This man is outside all mainstream thought on what constitutes deficit reduction, has a personal vendetta that he has waged his entire career against low-income persons, and is impervious to new information or persuasion. He knows what he knows, even if it's wrong, even if he doesn't really know it. And there's no changing any of that.

And the Obama administration is defending him harder than it ever stuck up for progressives. That tells me something. What does it tell you?

[onethatcares]

3. it tells me

the workers and working poor don't really matter much to this adminsitration. I just hope I'm wrong on that point.

As far as simpson, why the hell do we have to put up with the old farts time after time. They never seem to learn a thing.

[ThomCat]

6. It tells all of us that Obama doesn't really care about poor workers.

:(

He not only puts this guy on this commission, but keeps him there and protects him.

But he can't find the energy and effort to hire Elizabeth Warren to protect us from predators on Wall Street?

Why is it that well-connected rich people who don't know jack-shit about the job they are supposed to be dealing with, but blatantly want to hurt poor people can get appointed so easily, but actual Experts with Real Skills and Qualifications who want to help and protect all Americans can't appointed?

Elizabeth Warren couldn't even get one of the recess appointments! Why not? :grr:

[Canuckistanian]

7. Simpson has no frame of reference for the working poor

He's spent his whole life in the world of affluence and guaranteed incomes.

And even in late life, he's raking in the big bucks by being invited to join this commission.

I can't imagine anyone so far removed from real life in the economic trenches.

[glitch]

8. He, his father and his son have all spent their careers suckling on govt teat

and sneering at Americans who work for a living.

[TBF]

2. K&R nt

[MichiganVote]

4. Uh one of the udder ways of looking at this is to assume that some old bulls

lack the balls to do their own fieldwork.

[earth mom]

5. Simpson is a fucking idiot. But we all knew that already. nt