I'm not looking to start a big fight, but I'm getting pretty tired of reading the term "Catfood Commission" here. This especially bothers me because McJoan (Joan McCarter) is one of its most frequent users, and I absolutely, positively adore McJoan.
Look, I'm opposed to cutting Social Security benefits, for both policy and political reasons (and personal, given that I'll be receiving them before terribly long...). I thought that the entire debt ceiling showdown was a Republican-manufactured farce, which too many Democrats, and the President, allowed them to maneuver into a no-win battle of competing spending cut plans, when the dire state of the economy demands just the opposite. The idea that summary reductions to entitlements are a highly probable outcome of the Gang of 12 scheme is troubling, to say the least.
Nevertheless, I have a big problem with the use of the term "Catfood Commission," whether for the original Simpson/Bowles commission, or for this new Super Congress.
Since when do we, as progressives/liberals who try to be "reality-based" and the "adults in the room" resort to hyperbolic, extremist, fear-mongering rhetoric and labeling? When Republicans do this, we rightly slam them ("Death Panels", "Baby Killers", "Welfare Queens", etc.). So why should we resort to the same type of over-the-top phrasing to make our points?
Please turn to Page 2.
I do get the point: Both Simpson/Bowles and the Super Congress are in effect "commissions" that are designed to reduce and restructure federal expenditures, and there is a prevailing, misguided presumption that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid should be the prime targets for budget cuts. In reality, these programs are generally solvent, particularly SS, and they are not the "cause" of the deficit, given that they are intended to function as "insurance" programs, and have generated strong surpluses, which have in fact been subsidizing other areas of federal spending.
We should be talking about eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the rich, cutting defense spending, generating new jobs and income growth, not reducing the deficit on the backs of the elderly and infirm. The Paul Ryan philosophy, shared by most Repubs and their Presidential candidates, is essentially to reward corporations and bankers and squeeze those who have already contributed their entire lives to building our society, but who now rely on their pact with government, which they faithfully paid into for decades, to live a reasonably comfortable life in retirement.
I get all of that, and I heartily agree. Still, under no proposal that even the most extreme right-wing nutcase has advocated would Social Security payments be cut to the point where senior citizens would be forced to eat cat food. Sure, you can dig up a couple of anecdotes along those lines, but the reality of the budget discussion is not about tossing old people into the streets, forcing them to choose between eating and medication, rounding them up in decrepit old folks homes, or any other such sensationalism.
Yes, SS cuts would be politically foolish for Democrats, morally unfair, and difficult for many seniors to adjust to. No, they wouldn't cause anyone to starve. They would amount to, at most, $100 to $200 per month in lower COLAs: less than $7 per day in reduced purchasing power. You don't go from comfortable living to scrounging for cat food if you lose $7 per day.
Many, many working-age people in this country have lost their jobs, are struggling to make ends meet, are truly desperate. In fact, many children especially are undernourished, and many poor families have to get by on incomes that are significantly below what a typical Social Security recipient is paid per month. I've frankly seen a lot less outrage and hyperbole about this situation than I have about the possibility of minor reductions in SS payments.
Not that we should have to choose which inequities outrage us, but this is why I find the "Catfood Commission" branding campaign disturbing. By creating (false) images of senior citizens being forced into abject, humiliating poverty, this phraseology almost tends to ignore or downplay the very real plight of those who are already in actual poverty. Some of whom probably do eat cat food, God forbid.
The bottom line is that I am extremely uncomfortable with employing Republican-like alarmist imagery, in a manner that might have been designed by Newt Gingrich, just to try to score political points. I think it may work with some people, but in a cruel and insensitive manner, by frightening uninformed senior citizens into believing that their very livelihood might be at stake. But for many others, they will likely recognize the term as the propaganda that it is, and be turned off by it, while feeling inclined to lump progressives in the same box with right-wing fear-mongers.
I think we can do better.