PRESS RELEASE
Obama's New Commission Is
An Impeachable Offense
Feb. 18, 2010 (EIRNS)—The Obama Administration moved to carry out its next impeachable offense—handing the Congress's constitutional powers over the nation's economic affairs to a special commission—on Feb. 18, when the President issued an Executive order creating the "National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform." Obama appointed former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, and former Clinton OMB head and White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles as co-chairmen.
While the Commission will not have the force of the law which Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Donald Gregg (R-N.H.) tried to put through the Congress last year, its murderous intent—in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other necessary government spending—is clear. The President lied when he announced the establishment of the commission, saying that it won't touch Social Security and Medicare. Yet one of the its major purposes, stated in his Executive order, is to "address the growth of entitlement spending."
This agenda was the subject of yet another forum on the "Government Debt Crisis" held by the Peterson-Pew Commission/Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget on Feb. 16: Asked by a questioner about reports that some experts said Medicare had to be cut by 50%, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) official agreed, noting that "we have to scare people." A subtheme of the discussion was whether the mass strike process among the American people could be coopted into support for draconian austerity—or whether it would lead to resistance.
The response to the only two intelligent questions reflects the insane mood. When former Reagan Administration official Norman Bailey asked about increasing production, rather than just adjusting spending, he was essentially brushed aside. The last question to Federal Reserve governor Thomas Hoenig, a vocal opponent of the hyperinflationary bailout, was also on the mark, as the questioner raised the possibility of differentiating between productive and non-productive investments, with differing fiscal policies—in effect, a two-tiered interest rate policy, as Lyndon LaRouche has previously proposed. Although he opposed the bailout of the speculative bank assets, Hoenig was adamantly against a two-tier credit policy, saying that it would "politicize" the Fed if there were a 2% interest rate for some investments, and a 9% rate for others.
Reality—in terms of the need for bankruptcy reorganization which would wipe out trillions in unpayable and illegitimate debt—was nowhere evident.