Republicans have now named Sen. Judd Gregg (New Hampshire), Senator Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), Senator Mike Crapo (Idaho) – in the House Rep. Paul Ryan (Wisconsin), Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Rep. Dave Camp (Michigan)
joining these Democrats named by Harry Reid:
Sen. Richard Durbin (Illinois), Sen. Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Sen. Max Baucus (Montana)
President Obama named David Cote (a Republican), CEO of Honeywell International, Alice Rivlin who was budget director under President Bill Clinton and now at Brookings Institute.
President Obama also named: Ann Fudge a CEO of Young & Rubicam Brands and a force behind Brand Obama in the election, Andrew Stern, SEIU head, Erskine Bowles who started his career at Morgan Stanley and later founded an investment banking firm. He is now president of University of North Carolina. Also named is
Alan Simpson (Wyoming) who was the No. 2 Republican in the Senate for a decade.
This commission has a strong conservative flavor – save for Illinois – the Senate and former Senate appointees come from conservative/moderate lesser populated states.
Let’s focus on Kent Conrad for instance.
He is one of five members of the Senate who threatened Speaker Pelosi to hand over power to an independent commission that can slash and privatize SS and Medicare. Or they would allow the US to default on its debt.
His website is absolutely swoony about SS and Medicare. The one in five South Dakotans who are on SS must be impressed with the lies on that page. I certainly was.
Conrad voted NO on establishing reserve funds and prefunding for SS
which would require that the Fund be used only to finance retirement income of future beneficiariesensure that there is no change to benefits for individuals born before January 1, 1951