When Alan Simpson stepped in it late Tuesday he probably didn’t think he’d find himself on the receiving end of a barrage of criticism and calls for him to resign his position as co-chair of the White House’s fiscal reform commission. After all, comparing Social Security to a “milk cow with 310 million tits” is inartful and inapt, but hardly a terminal offense.
Except Alan Simpson isn’t just any old Social Security commentator, and progressives, say what they will, weren’t really reacting to the analogy or the questionable language. They were reacting to Simpson himself, who’s spent much of his life looking for ways to fundamentally alter (he would say “enhance”, but most would say “cut”) Social Security. To them, Simpson’s criticism was a harbinger of how the 18-member commission will propose to change the most popular entitlement program in the country, and it raises the question, again, of why President Obama appointed him in the first place.
Simpson, a Republican, was elected to the Senate in 1978 to represent the state of Wyoming, and wasted little time setting his sites on Social Security. “I just happen to believe that Social Security and Medicare are so out of whack they ought to be constantly subject to budgetary review to identify unnecessary duplicative activities in the same way that every other Federal program is,” he said on September 16, 1985, according to the Congressional Record.
As chairman of the Social Security subcommittee, he had unusual influence over the program, and has since found himself at the epicenter of several efforts to reform taxes and entitlements over the years. In 1994, he served on President Clinton’s Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform — what’s come to be known as the Kerrey-Danforth Commission named after its chairs, former Sens. Bob Kerrey (D-NE) and John Danforth (R-MO).
As a member of that commission, he advocated for numerous changes to Social Security, including benefit cuts and partial privatization. And he had a familiarly condescending attitude toward advocates who didn’t agree with him, deriding their “cut-someone-else-but-not-me” view of entitlements. “The biggest barrier to our work on this commission is not going to be greed, it’s not going to be ideology, it’s going to be ignorance,” he said.
In an exchange with then-CBO Director Robert Reischauer he exclaimed, “what will get us home is dealing with the years in the future, changing some of the figures of Social Security, phasing in retirement dates, changing retirement dates, doing something with COLAs. Those things could get us there, couldn’t they?”
Reischauer agreed, “They could.” But Simpson wanted more.
“You think they could get us there?” he asked.
“I just said they could,” Reischauer said. “You mentioned a pretty extensive list there of some pretty severe changes.”
An undeterred Simpson responded “Without, quote, ‘cutting a benefit,’ unquote.”
“Well, I don’t want to get into semantics here on what is cutting a benefit,” Reischauer said, “but if I were a 65-year-old person who was told that they couldn’t receive benefits until they were 70, I might regard that as a benefit cut.”
Simpson tried to change the subject, “Well, the monthly amount they receive is called the benefit. The [cost of living adjustment] was never part of that. As I understand Social Security, that was never part of a contract.”
“I was talking about extending the retirement age,” Reischauer responded.
The members of the Kerrey-Danforth Commission never reached consensus on entitlement reform, but Simpson was undeterred. After it wrapped, he partnered with his former fellow commissioners on legislation that would have made the changes he’d pressed for, including allowing people to redirect part of their Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts.
Those efforts likewise failed, and Simpson retired. His privatization idea, however, was later promoted by former president George W. Bush while in office. It may end up, again, part of the GOP’s plans in 2011.
And now Simpson’s resurfaced as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. And though his arguments have changed somewhat, his goals remain the same.
“[When Social Security was created] they never dreamed that the life expectancy [would go] from 57 years of age to 78 or 75 or whatever,” Simpson told a critic in an exchange caught on video. “Who would dream that? No one. They just died.”
In reality, lower life expectancy in the early 1900s was a function of higher infant mortality, but people who reached retirement age back then lived typically lived for years thereafter.
Simpson also recently attacked another critic, and Social Security expert named Dean Baker. But it wasn’t till Tit-gate that the calls for his resignation came flooding in. One such call comes from the AFL-CIO.
“It’s troubling that the chairman of this important commission is suggesting that fighting to protect seniors from benefit cuts is not honest work,” said Kelly Ross, AFL’s Deputy Director of Policy. “Because that’s what we do.”
“The mission of the deficit commission is not about shoring up the funding gap over the long term. That’s not its mission. Its mission is to look at entitlement spending,” Ross said. “The troubling thing is that you have this attitude from a pretty powerful and influential commission that Social Security recipients are somehow taking advantage of the system and are somehow responsible for the deficit problem.”
TPM reached out to Simpson by email, but did not get a response before press time.
