Deficit Commission Taking Aim At Social Security

From the Washington Post:

One of the oddest Web posts making the rounds in Washington is a series of blurry videos from Capitol Hill showing people coming and going from a closed-door meeting of President Obama's new deficit commission.

The mundane scenes have a sinister cast for activists who say the commission is at work on a secret plan to gut Social Security. Nancy Altman, whose group, Social Security Works, shot the footage, says the threat to the nation's primary social safety net is greater now than at any time in the program's 75-year history. ...

[S]everal groups, including MoveOn.org and the Campaign for America's Future, are threatening to make Social Security an issue in the midterm elections.

"It's likely to be a pretty full court press," said MoveOn campaign director Daniel Mintz, whose group plans to ask candidates to sign a pledge opposing Social Security cuts. "We're going to demand solutions to the deficit that make corporations and the rich pay their fair share of taxes, rather than cutting benefits and squeezing the middle class." ...

Five years ago, when then-President George W. Bush proposed carving out a portion of Social Security taxes to create private retirement accounts, a coalition of progressive groups and advocates for the elderly organized to smother the plan. Even in a Republican Congress, the idea went nowhere. In 2006, Democrats campaigned against the plan and regained control of Congress.

Now some of the same groups are watching Obama's commission closely. They note that many of its members have publicly advocated cutting Social Security, including co-chairman Alan Simpson, a former GOP senator from Wyoming, who has chastised "greedy geezers" for fighting to protect their retirement checks while their grandchildren face a towering debt.

"Social Security is not the problem. It's simply becoming the target," said Barbara Kennelly, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.