Zombies Roam the Corridors of the US Congress

Ace reporter Paul Krugman was on the scene early and reports the terrifying breaking news...

It must have sounded like a good idea (although not to me): establish a bipartisan commission of Serious People to develop plans to bring the federal budget under control.

But the commission is already dead — and zombies did it.

OK, the immediate problem is the statements of Alan Simpson, the commission’s co-chairman. And what got reporters’ attention was the combination of incredible insensitivity – the “lesser people”??? — and flat errors of fact.

But it’s actually much worse than that. On Social Security, Simpson is repeating a zombie lie — that is, one of those misstatements that keeps being debunked, but keeps coming back.

Specifically, Simpson has resurrected the old nonsense about how Social Security will be bankrupt as soon as payroll tax revenues fall short of benefit payments, never mind the quarter century of surpluses that came first.

We went through all this at length back in 2005, but let me do this yet again.

Social Security is a government program funded by a dedicated tax. There are two ways to look at this. First, you can simply view the program as part of the general federal budget, with the the dedicated tax bit just a formality. And there’s a lot to be said for that point of view; if you take it, benefits are a federal cost, payroll taxes a source of revenue, and they don’t really have anything to do with each other.

Alternatively, you can look at Social Security on its own. And as a practical matter, this has considerable significance too; as long as Social Security still has funds in its trust fund, it doesn’t need new legislation to keep paying promised benefits.

OK, so two views, both of some use. But here’s what you can’t do: you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that for the last 25 years, when Social Security ran surpluses, well, that didn’t mean anything, because it’s just part of the federal government — but when payroll taxes fall short of benefits, even though there’s lots of money in the trust fund, Social Security is broke.

And bear in mind what happens when payroll receipts fall short of benefits: NOTHING. No new action is required; the checks just keep going out.

So what does it mean that the co-chair of the commission is resurrecting this zombie lie? It means that at even the most basic level of discussion, either (a) he isn’t willing to deal in good faith or (b) the zombies have eaten his brain. And in either case, there’s no point going on with this farce.

The Republicans aren't serious. They are "politicians" in the same sense as the Nazi party was a "political" party. They don't have any regard for truth. Their use the big lie technique. They aren't seeking power to produce a better country. Nope... they want power so they can rape and pillage. They only want power so they can pass more tax cuts to reward their buddies and pals, the ultra-rich.

They are like the Nazis in that they knowingly use outrageous claims (Repubs: "gay marriage will destroy the American family", Nazis: "Jews are vermin") and they knowingly manipulate a credulous mass for their own devious ends (Repubs: "we are the compassionate conservatives who want to put Church back into the State", Nazis: "We are the flower of Aryan youth who want to create a thousand year Reich for our people").

The Nazis raped and pillaged and within 19 years self-destructed. The Republicans have kept their peculiar politics going since the Goldwater/Nixon days of the mid-1960s. But there are more than superficial similarities between these two scourges of political life.