The steal our retirement commission

Executive Order -- National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

Sec. 4. Mission. The Commission is charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run. Specifically, the Commission shall propose recommendations designed to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015. This result is projected to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio at an acceptable level once the economy recovers. The magnitude and timing of the policy measures necessary to achieve this goal are subject to considerable uncertainty and will depend on the evolution of the economy. In addition, the Commission shall propose recommendations that meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook, including changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government.

Entitlement spending, code for social security, is right in the text of the Executive Order. This commission is being created for the precise purpose of looting social security. Therefore we should always refer to it as the Steal Our Retirement Commission (lambert, can you put that in the dictionary of liberal invective?).

The interest on debt is specifically excluded. Seeing as increased Social Security taxes since the Reagan era have been used to buy T-bills, how is limiting future benefits not a form of debt repudiation? Why is debt owed to Grand Ma less sacred than debt owed to Goldman Sachs?

That is the question we should ask the commission again and again. Presumably they will have regional hearings, or at least public meetings. With any luck we will have activists willing to be arrested if the commission is unwilling to hear from our advocates.

We also will have to send them alternative suggestions, like cutting Africom and other jingoistic follies we cannot afford. We also should suggest funding for obviously fraudulent programs like abstinence programs. We will also need to bring up the assorted bail outs.

But wherever they go they should be greated by protestors weilding "So no to the Steal Our Retirement Commission" signs. We must make this commission politically radioactive.