We’ve already seen a sneak preview of the Commission’s Co-Chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson’s ideas regarding Social Security cuts, including these gems:

 – Raise the retirement age to 69
 – Reduce cost of living adjustments
 – Gut benefits to the disabled and survivors
 – Cut Medicare, increase co-pays and reduce provider reimbursements

The proposals targeting Social Security, a program we workers fund to pay for our retirements not to subsidize other government programs, is at best insulting and at worst a crack at the single greatest program to keep seniors out of poverty. According to the US census, in its current form, Social Security kept 14 million seniors above the poverty level.

Keeping in mind, too, that Social Security has not added a dime to our national debt or yearly deficits, the Erskine Bowles suggestions to cut this program instead of taxing Wall Street excesses place a greater burden on workers over wealth at a time when poverty rates have soared for middle and lower income Americans.

Before the Bush era (back when President Clinton left the White House with a budget surplus) the poverty rate was at 11.3%. 31.1 million people were poor in the U.S. Black poverty, at 22.1 percent, was at its lowest in decades as well as poverty of households headed by single women at 24.7 percent. Poverty for people age 65 and older was 10 percent. Poverty for children under 18 was at 16.2 percent

Compare then to now when the 2009 poverty rate was at 14.3 percent. 13 million more Americans are now living in poverty, totaling 44 million men, women and children who are forced by the twisted economy to survive on less than $22,000 a year for a family of four ($10,800 for a single).

Black poverty has grown to 25.8 percent, and a record number of people are now dependent on federal poverty programs like Medicaid and food stamps (1 in 7 adults receive food stamps though more are eligible). 
 
In order for the Commission’s plan to be recommended to Congress, 14 of the 18 commissioners must agree to it, and two of them, Representative Jan Schakowsky (D) Illinois;  and Senator Dick Durbin (D) Illinois, have already stated that they will not support the Erskine Bowles plan.