Deficit Commission's Rumored Deal Would Pit Middle-Class Seniors Against the Poor

By Richard Eskow

Created 09/09/2010 - 12:07pm

If back-channel sources are correct, the White House deficit commission is finalizing a deal that would increase Social Security benefits slightly for low-income recipients while cutting them for everyone else. The Commissioners apparently believe that putting this "progressive" gloss on a package of unneeded cuts would allow them to move forward with their predetermined anti-Social Security agenda.

This new proposal would pit middle-class seniors against the elderly poor, forcing them to compete for a stripped-down pool of dollars. The end result would be the one that many Commission members have pursued for years [1]: to cut the most stable and successful program in the Federal government's history.

Accounts of this pending deal come from the top-secret, behind-a-firewall, inside-the-Cone-of-Silence proceedings of the commission itself, which is why they can't be officially confirmed. (Remind me again: Why are such critical issues being debated in secret, only to be presented to Congress for ratification after the November elections?) But if these reports are correct—and there is good reason to believe they are—some members of the Commission presumably believe this strategy would confuse and divide the many Americans who oppose Social Security cuts, while defusing the growing resistance to their actions among progressive members of Congress. [2]

The commissioners have clearly been stung by the nickname bloggers have given them: the "Catfood Commission." [3] This recommendation would take the edge off that name, since they could now claim they've made sure nobody will be eating Purina Old Folks' Chow as a result of their actions. It would also give them chance to bait their opponents: Don't you care about poor people?