News Release

Commission Targeting Social Security

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President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (chaired by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles) releases its report today. See live webcast from the National Press Building with Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Robert Kuttner and others commenting on the report from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET: ourfiscalsecurity.org

DEAN BAKER
Available for a limited number of interviews, Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. His most recent pieces are titled “Bowles and Simpson Violate Commission Charter and the Washington Post Covers Up” and “Homes Prices Are Plunging: Let’s Talk About the Deficit.” See his Beat the Press blog

Baker is author of the new book Taking Economics Seriously. Past books include False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, The Conservative Nanny State and Social Security: The Phony Crisis.

BARBARA KENNELLY, PAMELA TAINTER CAUSEY
Kennelly is president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security; Causey is communications director for the group. Kennelly said today: “The report released by the President’s Fiscal Commission today continues to lack the balanced approach to deficit and debt reduction the American people have said clearly and repeatedly they expect. Social Security never had a legitimate place in any deficit reduction discussion. Yet this Fiscal Commission report relies heavily on benefit cuts impacting working Americans to pay the price of failed economic policies of the past. It’s clear that too many in Washington will continue to search for a way to reduce Social Security benefits in order to avoid repaying the $2.6 trillion in bonds currently credited to Social Security.

“If we’re truly concerned about the future of middle-class America, then strengthening Social Security by closing its modest funding gap is a critical first step. But the policy choices we make in strengthening Social Security should be guided by what’s good for the program and not what’s wrong with the budget. Washington must stop ignoring the critical role Social Security continues to play for older Americans, their families and the economy as a whole. This report does not meet that very basic standard of fiscal fairness…”

JONATHAN TASINI
Tasini wrote the new ebook “It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis.” He said today: “The Simpson-Bowles agenda is … whipping up false hysteria about deficits to justify continuing the failed and immoral policy of the past 30 years: picking the pockets of ordinary Americans to help the rich get richer.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167