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Remember when boy Bush was questioned as to his having any regrets about his two-terms as President and he said that it was that he hadn't been able to privatize Social Security? (Try not to think of the millions dead and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
Aside from all the Bush boy and Chenegang vignettes what I've really enjoyed most these last two decades is how clever women don't actually get promoted or hired in large numbers anywhere except in the Rethuglican fraud industry. And there the numbers are legion.
Talk about those Heritage Foundation think tank "scholars." These are obviously from the Tom DeLay school of scholars. And with a name like Maya . . . .
Back in 2005, as President Bush was championing a plan to reduce benefits and turn Social Security into Wall Street–managed private accounts, MacGuineas and an operative at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute jointly published a National Reviewarticle advocating for that very idea.CNN Money op-ed explicitly calling for “benefit reduction(s)” and slamming President Obama for “not accept(ing) an approach that slashes benefits for future generations.” Not surprisingly, she didn’t bother to mention that the minimal revenue challenges within Social Security could be most easily solved by simply lifting the income cap on payroll taxes. She didn’t mention it, of course, because while such a proposal is popular among most Americans, it is quite unpopular among the rich folk who pay her salary.
Likewise, in 2011, MacGuineas published a
But perhaps the most illustrative evidence of MacGuineas’ true motives can be found in the 2008 Heritage Foundation paper she co-authored with Stuart Butler, a top official of that archconservative organization. Here’s the crux:
Monday, Dec 3, 2012
Social Security’s Most Media-Friendly Foe
Maya MacGuineas hides behind a "nonpartisan" label while trying to get Social Security on the "fiscal cliff" table
By David Sirota
Maya MacGuineas speaking to the National Press Club last year (notice that fraud Erskine Bowles at her side).
For those familiar with Ayn Rand’s writing, the question “Who is John Galt?” is succinct shorthand to summarize conservatives’ ideological campaign against government. But to really appreciate how that crusade operates on a day-to-day basis in the most important political battles of the moment, the best question right now is, “Who is Maya MacGuineas?”
The incurious political press’ answer to that query can be seen in a quick Google News search of her name. As you will see, she is one of the most oft-quoted, and therefore influential, “experts” in the so-called “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Most often, she is simply described by Washington reporters as the president of the “nonpartisan” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and, in that role, as the lead coordinator of the so-called “Fix the Debt” coalition.
Though words like “nonpartisan” are designed to cast both groups, and MacGuineas herself, as apolitical and ideologically dispassionate, the boards of both organizations (which you can see here and here) are teeming with business executives and lawmakers-turned-corporate lobbyists. That is, they are teeming with precisely the kind of hyperpartisan, ideologically driven Big Money interests that have a financial stake in balancing the budget in a way that at once prevents tax increases on the rich and cuts or privatizes social programs.
That latter goal is particularly important to these folks because they rightly see a privatized Social Security as a profit machine for the financial industry. That’s almost certainly why, as CNN reports, Wall Street–coddling Republicans are “insisting that Social Security reforms be part of” the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. This, despite the indisputable facts (acknowledged even by Ronald Reagan) that Social Security has almost nothing to do with the national deficit or debt.
The incurious political press’ answer to that query can be seen in a quick Google News search of her name. As you will see, she is one of the most oft-quoted, and therefore influential, “experts” in the so-called “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Most often, she is simply described by Washington reporters as the president of the “nonpartisan” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and, in that role, as the lead coordinator of the so-called “Fix the Debt” coalition.
Though words like “nonpartisan” are designed to cast both groups, and MacGuineas herself, as apolitical and ideologically dispassionate, the boards of both organizations (which you can see here and here) are teeming with business executives and lawmakers-turned-corporate lobbyists. That is, they are teeming with precisely the kind of hyperpartisan, ideologically driven Big Money interests that have a financial stake in balancing the budget in a way that at once prevents tax increases on the rich and cuts or privatizes social programs.
That latter goal is particularly important to these folks because they rightly see a privatized Social Security as a profit machine for the financial industry. That’s almost certainly why, as CNN reports, Wall Street–coddling Republicans are “insisting that Social Security reforms be part of” the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. This, despite the indisputable facts (acknowledged even by Ronald Reagan) that Social Security has almost nothing to do with the national deficit or debt.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now. He co-hosts The Rundown with Sirota & Brown on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More David Sirota.
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