Alice Rivlin’s latest opinion piece on Social Security, “The Right Reason for Saving Social Security,” makes the case for why she and the other members of the Catfood Commission are the wrong people for the job. First, from whom does Social Security need “saving,” other than from her and other self-proclaimed deficit hawks?    Rivlin acknowledges [...]

I have long held the belief that when Republican deficit hypocrites talk about “reducing the deficit,” they are simply using it as secret code for “exploiting regular Americans.” They almost never have plans that would actually reduce the deficit. Their “deficit reduction” plans are mainly schemes like taking Medicare and Social Security from middle-class people, [...]

The Hill has an article today talking about how much Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (WI) and Sen. Judd Gregg (NH) love what the Catfood Commission has been secretly scheming about. The fact that these two radicals admire what is happening in these private meetings is terrifying. But the article does contain an important detail about [...]

David Walker is the president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, founded by billionaire financier Peterson as a think tank on fiscal issues. On CNBC’s “Squawk Box” recently, Walker seemed to long for a return to debtor’s prisons. If he’s nostalgic for debtor’s prison, the next step is to advocate the return of [...]

There’s a very important an article in the Neiman Watchdog this morning (Harvard’s journalism review, Deputy Editor Dan Froomkin). It’s written by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, entitled “Has Obama created a Social Security ‘death panel’? Headlines like that are normally the reserve of DFH bloggers, so it’s notable that the academic world is talking [...]