Alan Simpson advising lawmakers on 'taxmageddon,' debt dealing

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the wise men of the deficit peacocks. (Larry Downing/Reuters) So a bunch of members of Congress, from both chambers and both sides of the aisle, are pretending like the catfood commission didn't fail, and that the report that its co-chairs came up with is somehow real. Bowles-Simpson (let's just call it BS for brevity) lives in the hopes and dreams of would-be deficit hawks, spelling more trouble for Social Security's long-term prospects. Bowles and Simpson have been meeting with nearly a hundred members of Congress to talk about how to enforce austerity and deal with the end of the year budget mess they've created for themselves.

Remember that BS lumped Social Security into their deficit cutting plan, never mind that Social Security (for the gazillionth time) does not contribute to the deficit. They recommend raising the retirement age and cutting back on cost of living payments, for no better reason apparently than Simpson hates old people.

He also willfully misunderstands and misleads on Social Security as a program. Last fall, in a typically unhinged attack on the AARP Simpson argued that'despite the very well-documented history of Social Security'the program was not meant to be a retirement program. He's back on that tangent, again, this time in a typically unhinged letter to Max Richtman, a former Senate staffer who now heads the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare.

"You know damn well that the system was never created as a 'retirement''it was an 'income supplement' to take care of folks working in CCC camps and who lost everything in the Great Depression."

Which is insane. The Los Angeles Times Michael Hiltzik counts the ways in which Simpson lies in that one little sentence.

Social Security was explicitly designed as a retirement program. There's no question about it, as its drafters, including Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and Edwin Witte, head of the Committee on Economic Security appointed by President Roosevelt in 1934, explained to Congress. Here's how Witte put it during two days of testimony, which can be found on the Social Security Administration's website:

"Whether a person works in a small establishment or a large establishment, whether he works on a farm or whether he works as a domestic servant, or whether he works in a factory, there is one common characteristic, which is that everybody grows old; and they all have to make provision for their old age or somebody has to take care of them.... And whether you do it in the form of pensions, or in some other way, there is no way of escaping that cost.' [...]

As for the CCC, or Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal work-relief program for young men Simpson references, the Congressional Record shows not a single mention of the CCC during the Senate and House debates'18 days all together.

This is who Congress'including far too many influential Democrats' is turning to for advice on how to make the big deal to slash Social Security so just maybe they can convince people even crazier than Alan Simpson to maybe think about raising some taxes.