Salon.com > Alan Simpson

Abolish the 401(k)

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:22:00 +0000

America’s retirement security policies are facing a major crisis. No, not the problem that Pete Peterson, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and other so-called deficit hawks have become famous for exaggerating — the relatively minor mismatch between promised Social Security benefits and scheduled Social Security payroll taxes in the 2030s. The real crisis facing current and future retirees in America’s aging society is the failure of the private components of America’s mixed public-and-private retirement system.

When Social Security was created in 1935, it was not intended to be the sole source of retirement income for most Americans. It was assumed that employer-provided defined benefit pensions with guaranteed payouts would supplement Social Security checks for many workers after they retired.

Unfortunately, employers have been abandoning defined benefit pensions for decades. The number of private sector workers with defined benefit pensions has fallen from around 40 percent in 1980 to a mere 15 percent today. At the same time, among public sector workers, poor management by state governments, combined with years of economic trouble, has created a crisis for public pension systems in many states.

Alan Simpson spins Jon Stewart

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 22:41:00 +0000

Crusty old Alan Simpson is on a crusade to get today's youth to care about the deficit as much as he does. It isn't easy, because the kids today are all too busy playing Mario Kart on their XBoxes and listening to Ke$ha on their Zunes and "dropping ecstasy" at their "rainbow parties" and Icing Bros and "ghostriding the whip" and cyberbullying to concern themselves with matters as grave as our national debt. But Simpson is determined to get them to care, and to prove he's "with it," he's recently done the two things today's "Millennials" love best: the Gangnam Style dance and appearing on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show."

The Gangnam dance thing was done on behalf of a transparently phony Pete Peterson-funded "youth organization" operated by old rich people, and you really don't need to see the stupid video. The "Daily Show" interview aired last night, and it was depressing.

Alan Simpson dances Gangnam Style

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:57:00 +0000

If the Gangnam style meme wasn't already dead, it definitely is now that 81-year old deficit commission co-chair Alan Simpson has acknowledged it. In a video targeting young people about joining The Can Kicks Back campaign, which is aimed at addressing the $16 trillion debt, Simpson, a former Republican Senator, tells them "stop Instagramming your breakfast and tweeting your 'first world problems,' and getting on YouTube so you can see Gangnam style, and start using those precious social media skills and go out and sign people up on this baby," or "these old coots will clean out the Treasury before you get there."

Watch, and check out the requisite gif:

Grover gets weird

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 13:00:00 +0000

The most important point to make about the spectacle of Grover Norquist being repudiated by some Republicans who signed his pledge is that it's mainly theater. Norquist is on the ropes now and it seems OK to punch him, in front of the cameras; in private, some Republicans may well be reassuring him that they're sticking to the pledge, because they are, more or less.

Still, Norquist is obviously feeling personally disrespected, and he's replying with some weird sexual imagery in chastening Republican apostates. A few have had "impure thoughts," Norquist told CNN, but "no Republican has voted for a tax increase." Really? "Impure thoughts"? Then he attacked New York Rep. Peter King for publicly stating he didn’t consider the no-tax pledge a lifelong vow. In creepy personal terms: "Shame on him," Norquist told Piers Morgan. "I hope his wife understands that commitments last a little longer than two years or something."

His wife? Is Norquist implying the pledge is akin to a marriage vow? Or that King is married to him? The volatile King shot back Tuesday, calling Norquist a "low-life" for comparing his supposed "weaseling out" of his no-tax pledge to violating his marriage vows to his wife.

Alan Simpson: I hope Grover Norquist drowns in the bathtub

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:45:00 +0000

So this just happened on "Hardball" -- former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, of the Simpson-Bowles commission, essentially called for anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist to slip and fall in the tub.

Norquist has said he wants a government small enough that it can drown in the bathtub.

Said Simpson:

"So how do you deal with someone who comes to stop government? ... Grover wandering the earth in his white robe saying he wants to drown government in the bathtub. I hope he slips in there with it."

Chris Matthews, in a new record, was left speechless for several moments.

And that wasn't even the strangest thing Simpson said in the interview. In a discussion of taxes and how the middle-class would end up on the short end, Simpson posed this question: "Who gets diddled the most?"

UPDATE: BuzzFeed now has the video.

When did “Fix the Debt” become “protect Bush tax cuts”?

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:52:00 +0000

“Fix the Debt,” as you've probably noticed from the Internet ads that are now as ubiquitous as the old Netflix pop-ups, is the newest high-profile effort by Peter G. Peterson and allies to build a public movement for long-term deficit reduction. Fix the Debt appears to be an ambitious public relations and grassroots lobbying effort layered on top of the other major Peterson-funded anti-deficit groups, all of them pushing for a “grand bargain” on taxes and spending, ideally before the “fiscal cliff” (or what I prefer to call the “fiscal reset,” because it's a chance to start over and reconsider bad choices from the 2000s). These include the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Concord Coalition, the Comeback America Initiative (former Peterson Foundation president David Walker's new project), as well as groups such as the Business-Industry Political Action Committee.