Former Senator Alan Simpson, co-chair of President Obama’s Deficit Commission which recommended $4 trillion in cuts over the next decade. Simpson served in Congress for 18 years and since his retirement in 1997 has been receiving a Congressional pension of indeterminate amount.
The following are quotes from his interview on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley February 6, 2011 which may raise questions as to his uncouth disposition.
“Does anyone support the really tough stuff in that Commission Report on entitlement spending, defense spending and taxes?"
“Yeah, the people who embraced it were on the commission are now embedded in the U.S. Senate, four of them. You’ve got Coburn, they thought he was very suspicious, right wing; Andy Stern, the union guy, didn’t vote for it but old Doc Coburn and Stern worked together on defense issues cutting 250,00 contractors out, they don’t even know how many they have. then you have Kent Conrad, Dick Durbin deserves a medal of honor I’ll tell you, he voted for it; so you got 4 guys sitting “Crapo, Coburn, Durbin Conrad – sitting in the us senate, who sat with us for 10 months; they’re embedded, spreading the virus.”
Simpson criticized politicians who are proposing to get rid of "earmarks, all waste, fraud and abuse, foreign aid, Air Force One, congressional pensions" as playing politics. “That’s just sparrow belch in the midst of a typhoon. that’s about 6-8-10% of where we are.” Simpson makes a phlemy-splotching sound with his lips.
“I'm waiting for the politician to get up and say, there's only one way to do this, you dig into the big four, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense. Anybody giving you anything different than that, you want to walk out the door, stick your finger down your throat, and give them the green weenie."
“The God here in Washington is the God of reelection and I think that God is a little tarnished and the feet are crumbling. I had a Democrat Senator, I won’t say who it was, who said last night, I won’t use the time, who said that he is ready to go out this time by carrying the ball on this program even if it defeats me.”
“Full faith and credit of US will be in peril and we might have to close the government and they said they why we came here, and then we’re going to grab their elbows and hearing the crackling of their bones. We’re going to say how do we get your vote and they say cut spending cut spending and don’t me that jazz.
“We’re not balancing the budget on the backs of social security.. I said to the AARP hire-ups, are there any patriots in here or just markeeters.. these people are monsters. They said there are two modest things to help social security solvency …could you share with us what they might be and they never do they just babble; sit there like sphinxes in their marble and wood temple up there, an unbelievable place up there, they spend $17 million bucks a year rent the last time I looked at them…I had a hearing on them and they nearly went goofy..but I loved them."
“Don’t forget what we’re doing with Social Security; we're taking care of the lowest 20%, taking care of people over 80, we’re not talking about privatization, these jerks who keep dragging it up are lying, we never suggested that; talking about doing a hideous thing to change the retirement age to 68 by 2050 and here people howl and bitch about that.”
“If we don’t do anything by the end of this year the guys who hold our paper, will say we don’t like the paper anymore, we thought you guys had the guts to do to the big stuff and you didn’t. You did the little teeny crap that means nothing and we want some money for our paper.“
“If you don’t do anything with social security, when you waddle up to get your check, you will get 22% less in 2037. I can’t believe the stupidity and cupidity who raise the specter of a cat food commission we were called….that’s ghastly.”
On President Eisenhowers’ warning re military spending and sacrifice re social security, medicaid and medicare.
“We (the deficit commission) were stunned. We were like the people who know too much…the ten months that all of us spent there we saw things…we asked Durbin and Conrad what do you hear from the defense department when we talk about cutting contractors; they don’t know how many contractors they have; it’s something between 250,000 and a million so our proposal is to cut 250,000 contractors out of the game.."
“and then you got guys who retire after 20 years in the military and go to work for big time defense people at big time salaries and they’re knocking into the system twice, it is an incestuous sick little cozy system and they get an idea of something that will shoot around corners without eyeballs and they go and get somebody to buy it, procure it.”
“You mention the word defense and you’re supposed to collapse and do some flip on your head. Let me tell you guys, nobody’s going to hurt the military, we’re not going to hurt Iran and Iraq. This is first war in our history where we never had a tax to support a war including the revolution.”
On the 67 page commission report:
“We use words like ‘self sacrifice’ “sacrifice’ we use words like ‘going broke.’’ Before you write and bitch to me again, read it. That’s what I tell people and then i don’t hear from them again except to get some delightful emails, some of them very crude. Well, enough of that…it’s sad.“
“But I have one regret. I meant to say that America was a milk cow of 300 million tits and not just Social Security.”
“Deficit denial is dead as a doo-doo bird and if deficits mean nothing, I ‘ll buy the drinks.”
Listen to Sen. Simpson:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/06/simpson-politicians-need-to-step-up-tackle-big-debt/
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