Listen to this:
Alan Simpson believes that Social Security is "like a milk cow with 310 million tits," according to an email he sent to the executive director of National Older Women's League Tuesday morning. Simpson co-chairs the deficit commission, which is considering various proposals to cut Social Security benefits.
The purpose of the deficit commission is to reduce the deficit. Simpson and other Republicans on the commission want to cut spending for ordinary people. So all we hear from them is cutting Social Security, Medicare and other popular programs. Nary a word do we hear about anything that would hurt the rich and the super-rich.
Millionaires and billionaires, on the whole, pay less a percentage of their income in taxes than do people in the middle class. This is due of course to the many exemptions and deductions they may use to reduce their taxes - in some cases, to nothing. Will Simpson consider this legal cheating in his recommendations?
If he had any courage - just dreaming - Simpson would recommend that the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires be removed in order to cut our deficit by $36 billion per year from now on.
Let's cut this nonsense about Social Security privatization. If Bush had been successful in his privatization efforts, the deep depression we are in would have been deeper. Things are bad enough without Republicans trying to make things worse.
The commission should recognize that the depression has hit the poor much worse than it has hit the rich. As a matter of fact there is no depression for the rich, among which there is a 3% unemployment rate. The rich, not the poor or middle class, should be made to contribute most toward reduction of the deficit.
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