Deficit Commission Members

The President created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, AKA the Deficit Commission, to decide how to reduce the Federal deficit. The Commission has put Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on the chopping block.

The following is a comprehensive list of the members on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Each member’s likelihood to support cutting benefits of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are included, along with their position on privatizing the aforementioned programs.

There is an overwhelming majority of members on this commission who favor cutting benefits/privatizing federal social programs in order to balance the budget, yet they will not consider cutting military spending or increasing taxes on the rich to help decrease the deficit.

Breakdown of Commission from firedoglake.com.

There’s also a great breakdown of the Deficit Commission members at Talking Points Memo.

Member	Open to cutting benefits?	Expressed support for privatization?	Conflicts of Interest
Erskine Bowles, Chair	YES - Bowles is on the record that the commission will “mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, because if you take those off the table, you can’t get there.”	YES - Negotiated deal with Newt Gingrich to raise Social Security retirement age & some privatization under Clinton; deal was stopped by Lewinski scandal.	Sits on the board of Morgan Stanley. Wife Candice is on the board of JP Morgan Chase. Finance, insurance & real estate sector donated over $3 million to his unsuccessful 2004 Senate bid.
Alan Simpson, R-WY-ret, Co-Chair	YES - When asked about cuts he would recommend to the President and Congress on CNBC, Simpson said “We are going to stick to the big three,” meaning Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.	YES - “[A]s recently as 2005, Simpson supported attempts by President George Bush to privatize Social Security by turning part of the pension and insurance program into millions of individual investment accounts, which by now would have lost 20 percent of their value.” (2/27/2010)	Simpson and Peterson were appointed to Bill Clinton’s Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement Reform in 1994. Both voted to recommend partial privatization of Medicare, and raising Social Security age of eligibility to 70, Simpson awarded “Economic Patriot” award by Peterson’s Concord Coalition in 1996.
Ann Fudge	Unknown	Unknown	Board member on the Council of Foreign Relations, where Peterson is Chairman Emeritus and Robert Rubin is Director/Co-Chair, fundraiser for Obama campaign, Novartis Board of Directors
Alice Rivlin	YES - Co-author with OMB director Peter Orszag of a Brookings report titled “Restoring Fiscal Sanity” advocating $47 billion in entitlement cuts, including an “increase in the retirement age under Social Security” and “more accurate inflation adjustments to Social Security benefits.”	Unknown	Board member with Pete Peterson on Committee for a Responsible Budget, Former board member with Peterson of Public Agenda (Peterson gave them $500,000 in 2009), Advisory Council member of Robert Rubin’s Hamilton Project, Senior Fellow at the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institute (position funded by Peterson Foundation/Concord Coalition donations).
John Spratt (D-SC)	Yes - “House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina and his counterpart in the Senate, Kent Conrad of North Dakota are promoting a ‘grand bargain’ in which a bipartisan commission enacts spending caps on social insurance as the offset for current deficits.” (2/23/2009)	Yes - “Spratt favors supplementing Social Security with a private savings plan that would either be mandatory or else so attractive that everyone would sign up for it. He also advocates investing about 20 percent of the Social Security trust fund in the stock market.” (4/7/1998, per Lexis)
Andy Stern	Unknown – Previously opposed to cuts, but said recently that entitlement programs “need to be re-examined.”	Expressed support for of “the possibility of add-on universal private accounts.”
Dick Durbin (D-IL)	YES - Durbin admonished “bleeding heart liberals” to be open to program reductions to restore fiscal balance.	Unknown
David M Cote	Likely – Cote is a Republilcan.	Unknown	CEO of defense contractor Honeywell. The defense industry has consolidated itself into a few big players, and they see their financial futures in competition with social safety net programs for government dollars. They won big when 9/11 blew the lock off the Social Security “lockbox.”
Paul Ryan (R-WI)	YES - Ryan’s recently released budget plan calls for “enormous tax cuts for the affluent” and “very large benefit cuts” in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.	YES - Ryan proposes to give people under age 55 the choice of opting out of Social Security into privatized personal accounts.	Ranking minority member on House budget committee.
Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)	YES – On Hardball, “Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) argued that to balance the budget Congress needed to consider reducing Social Security spending for yet-to-be-retired beneficiaries.” (2/2/10)	Yes - In a 2005 Congressional hearing, said that “the trust fund has already been raided 59 different times,” but that “with the exception of the great depression there has never been a four year consecutive period where the stock market has declined.” If allowing people to invest in half their Social Security in a personal account will “give them greater retirement security,” he said, “why wouldn’t we choose that plan?”	Second ranking minority member on House budget comittee
Dave Camp (R-MI)	Likely – Says he doesn’t want to cut current retirees’ monthly checks, but Diamond-Orszag plan being pushed by the Obama administration cuts benefits for future retirees who are now under 55.	Yes - “He was a strong supporter of Bush’s proposal to create private investment accounts within Social Security, despite the backlash the plan encountered,” per CQ Healthbeat, 2/2/09 (Nexix). Also a signatory to Republican Main Street Partnership 98-RMSP3.	Ranking minority member, Ways and Means Committee
Xavier Becerra (D-CA)	No	No
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)	No	No
Judd Gregg (R-NH)	Yes - Gregg’s plan “would reduce the traditional guaranteed retirement benefits for today’s workers.” (USA Today, 7/27/98, Nexis)	Yes - Gregg’s solution to “Social Security’s fiscal problems” included “large-scale privatization” and raising the eligibility age to 70 by the year 2029.	Ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee
Tom Coburn (R-OK)	Yes - “There are only three things you can do with Social Security,” Coburn said. “You can raise taxes on Social Security, you can allow option-out into private accounts or you can delay retirement age. I’m not for raising taxes on Social Security when you fix it other ways.” (4/25/10)	Yes - “Coburn called for creation of private accounts that would keep Congress from spending the money.” (Oklahoman, 11/26/04, Nexis)
Mike Crapo (R-ID)	Likely – Co-sponsor of the DeMint-Crapo Amendment, which would have “made no changes to the benefits of those Americans born before January 1, 1950.” Like Dave Camp, implied benefit cuts to those born afterwards.	Yes - DeMint-Crapo Amendment would have “provided a voluntary option for younger Americans to obtain legally binding ownership of a portion of their Social Security benefits. I believe that individuals have the right to make decisions about their own money.”
Max Baucus (D-MT)	Likely – Baucus said he was open to discussion if Bush would take privatization off the table	Unknown	Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, tapped by Reid to lead the battle against President Bush’s privatization of Social Security. But according to Yglesias, “the Democrats’ only real victory of the last five years stuffing the administration on Social Security came after Harry Reid explicitly ordered Baucus not to negotiate with the White House.”
Kent Conrad (D-ND)	Yes - “House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina and his counterpart in the Senate, Kent Conrad of North Dakota” are promoting a “grand bargain” in which a bipartisan commission enacts spending caps on social insurance as the offset for current deficits. (2/23/2009)	Yes - “I think there is a kernel of a good idea with individual accounts because we do need to find a way to get a higher rate of return on funds invested in Social Security. But I cannot support a plan that is financed by massive new debt. This administration is not collecting the taxes that are due now. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year that are owed that are not being paid. We should do that. That would give us a new revenue stream that could be applied to individual accounts and the other parts of the budget deficits that are hurting the country.” (This Week, February 13, 2005, Nexis)	Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.