Salon.com > Bowles-Simpson

Meet the pro-austerity hypocrites

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:22:00 +0000

The major corporations backing a group founded by the pro-austerity icons Simpson and Bowles take advantage of a loophole to avoid paying taxes on some of what they pay their CEOs, according to a new report.

The report, from the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, finds that between 2009 and 2011, top executives at the 90 publicly held corporate members of the Fix the Debt coalition raked in at least $953 million -- and as much as $1.6 billion -- through the “performance pay” loophole, which counts some executive compensation as a tax-deductible business expense, instead of a salary. Fix the Debt, founded by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, is one of the many groups tied to Wall Streeter cum policy entrepreneur Pete Peterson, who has spent the last 20 years trying to reduce the debt, in large part through cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare. The group has attracted some of the largest corporations in the country as sponsors, as well as former lawmakers, giving it serious clout in Washington.

GOP: We’ve been lying all along

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:15:00 +0000

I never thought I'd write these words, but here goes: Thank you, John Boehner. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for finally admitting on national television that all the fiscal cliffs, sequestrations and budget battles you've created are, indeed, artificially fabricated by ideologues and self-interested politicians and not the result of some imminent crisis that's out of our control.

America owes this debt of gratitude to Boehner after he finally came clean on yesterday's edition of ABC's "This Week" and admitted that "we do not have an immediate debt crisis." (His admission was followed up by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who quickly echoed much the same sentiment on CBS' "Face the Nation").

In offering up such a stunningly honest admission, the GOP leader has put himself on record as agreeing with President Obama, who has previously acknowledged that demonstrable reality. But the big news here isn't just about the politics of a Republican House speaker tacitly admitting they agree with a Democratic president. It is also about a bigger admission revealing the fact that the GOP's fiscal alarmism is not merely some natural reaction to reality, but a calculated means to other ideological ends.

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.

Simpson-Bowles is magic

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

Not many people know this but "The Simpson-Bowles Plan" is magic. It is whatever you want it to be. It will fix the deficit and grow the economy and it does it without raising taxes on anyone, unless you want to raise taxes on some people, and then it does that. It cuts all government spending but in a way that doesn't hurt Medicare or The Troops. If you stand in front of a mirror and say "Simpson-Bowles" three times David Gergen and Gloria Borger appear out of nowhere and praise your wisdom and seriousness. "The Simpson-Bowles Plan" gives you Your Country Back and makes it the '90s again, or the '50s, or whatever past decade you wish it was, when things were better. Simpson and Bowles were two kindly wizards and they granted America three wishes but dumb Washington, D.C., is too Partisan to make the wishes. Obama and the Republicans need to Grow Up and Get Serious and Pass "The Simpson-Bowles Plan," everyone in America agrees.

The fiscal cliff is a lie

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:44:00 +0000

The need for a “grand bargain” involving taxes and entitlements — in the next few years, if not immediately — has moved to the center of discussion in Washington. But it’s the wrong grand bargain — and a very bad deal for Middle America.

According to the conventional wisdom, any grand bargain should be modeled on plans like the Bowles-Simpson plan or the Rivlin-Domenici plan — financing lower tax rates on the rich by closing tax loopholes and cutting Social Security and Medicare. In the aftermath of an election in which the candidates of the rich were trounced at the polls, America’s plutocratic conservatives might be satisfied with merely maintaining existing low tax rates on the rich, while capping loopholes and cutting Social Security and Medicare.