I know I’ve mentioned it before (see here), but the deck is stacked against seniors, working people, and most everybody else that’s not in the investment banker-politico ruling elite. Now let’s take a look at some recent quotes from the co-Chair of the President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, Alan Simpson.

Soon after he was appointed to this role:

Simpson gave an interview on the NewsHour after his appointment, saying:

You have two choices…you either raise the payroll tax or decrease the benefits or start affluence testing. The rest of it is B.S. This country is gonna go to the bow-wows unless we deal with entitlements, Social Security, and Medicare.
From Columbia Journalism Review

Now that’s just total BS and nonsense. Social Security is not in contributing to the deficit. In fact, it actually helps fund and offset the deficit by the way the U.S. collects more in payroll taxes (Social Security taxes) than necessary to fund current outlays. But, Simpson’s not likely to let facts get in the way of something he’s wanted to do for decades: cut Social Security.

Now more recently (last month):

In his exchange with Alex Lawson of the advocacy group Social Security Works, reported Friday by my colleague Holly Yeager, Simpson challenged Lawson, asking “Where do you come up with all the crap you come up with? We’re trying to take care of the lesser people in society and do that in a way without getting into all the flash words you love to dig up, like cutting Social Security, which is bullshit.”

Got that? You and I, we are “lesser people”. Your grandma? A lesser person according to Simpson. Your mother and dad? Lesser people according to the guy who is going to chair the commission that seems dead-set on cutting Social Security. And remember, this President appointed him and won’t fire him.

Surely veterans are not “lesser people” right?  After all, they’re the noble warriors who defended the flag that Simpson and others like to wrap themselves in.  Wrong. Simpson again thinks veterans, at least those unfortunate enough to have been in the way when the U.S. used Agent Orange in Vietnam to defoliate burn down everything in sight.  He thinks these veterans getting disability benefits are part of the problem too.

Fresh off of being forgiven by the White House, Simpson has a new target.

RALEIGH, N.C.—The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission said Tuesday.

Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson’s comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans, even though decades of research has failed to find more than a possible link between the defoliant Agent Orange and diabetes.

“The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess,” said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee….

“It’s the kind of thing that’s just driving us to this $1 trillion, $400 billion deficit this year,” Simpson said. “It’s not that I’m an uncaring person, but common sense is the most uncommon thing in Washington.”

From Daily Kos