National Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

[OK, I'm de-sticky-ing this at lets's implicit request. --lambert]

[I'm leaving this sticky for the super comments thread, where contirbutors are doing what the old school blogosphere excelled at -- before the access bloggers became meme laundries for D factions -- Honing the message. -- lambert]

The progressive counter-attack against the President's emerging “austerity” political strategy and program is beginning to emerge. In the last few days, we've seen posts by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson of Social Security Works, Jane Hamsher, Robert Kuttner, and Dean Baker writing against the thrust by the Administration, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and its network of related organizations, and the deficit hawks in the Congress, seemingly aimed at Social Security. These posts make or imply a number of points sometimes in the form of questions. They are:

-- The commission is unaccountable.

-- It meets in secret. Read below the fold...

Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson Co-Directors of Social Security Works have written an article called “Has Obama created a Social Security 'death panel'? In the article they raise questions about the composition, process, and intentions of the President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and say:

”We write to raise questions and encourage press inquiry now, before the commission reports, at which point its recommendations could be on track and moving fast.”

And the questions they raise include:

”Q. Have the members of the Commission made up their minds, at least with respect to the broad outlines, making the whole exercise simply an effort by elected officials to escape political accountability?
Q. Why is the Commission apparently working so closely with billionaire Peter G. Peterson, who served in the Nixon administration and who has a clear ideological agenda?” Read below the fold...