We’ve written before about an organization that calls itself, “The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.” (CRFB)
We suggest they change the name to “The Committee for Screwing the Middle Classes and the Poor.” To say that what they publish is rank nonsense, would do a disservice to the words “rank” and “nonsense.”
CRFB is a prime promulgator of the Big Lie, the lie that the federal government somehow can run short of its own sovereign currency, the dollar, with which to pay its bills.
The Big Lie devolves to the Big Screwing, the never-ending effort by the rich, to cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut Medicaid and cut virtually every other program that benefits the middle classes and the poor.
Here are a couple of CRFB’s luminaries (quoting from their website), nearly all of whom are rich and all of whom are white:
Maya MacGuineas, the President of the CRFB as well as the head of the Campaign to Fix the Debt. (She once was) dubbed “an anti-deficit warrior” by The Wall Street Journal.
Since deficit spending is the method by which the federal government grows the economy, MacGuineas should more properly be dubbed “an anti-economic growth warrior.”
Erskine Bowles was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with fellow CRFB board member Senator Alan Simpson.
Erskine and Bowles authored a report that recommended cuts in the federal spending that was pulling us out of the Great Recession. Remember “sequestration” and the “fiscal cliff”?
Peter Peterson is the founder and chairman of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is the founding president of The Concord Coalition. Prior to this, he served as chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers.
Peterson is a very rich man who does everything possible to make sure your Social Security and Medicare are cut. The Concord Coalition is, like the CRFB, an organization devoted to widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.
In true CRFB tradition, our intelligence and our pocketbooks once again are assaulted with an article like this:
The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) 2016 Long-Term Budget Outlook release came with updated projections of the 75-year solvency of Social Security.
CBO now projects that Social Security faces a 75-year shortfall of 4.7 percent of taxable payroll – 0.3 percentage points worse than its projections from December – but maintains an exhaustion date of 2029.
Social Security is an agency of the federal government. Neither the federal government nor any of its agencies can become insolvent unless Congress wants it.
Unlike state and local governments, which can be insolvent, the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, meaning it has unlimited control over both the supply and the value of the U.S. dollar.
The U.S. government invented the dollar, created it from thin air by the simple device of passing laws, which also were created from thin air. Because the government never can run short of laws, it also never can run short of dollars.
The U.S. government never, never, never can be unable to service any invoice denominated in dollars. Never has, never will.  All talk about federal agency insolvency is 100% BS.
The rest of CRFB’s article attempts to put a scientific spin on its woefully false claims by touting such measures as: “actuarial shortfall” and “projections involving life expectancy, fertility, andgrowth in the consumer price index.”
But all the phony math in the world will not cover up the Big Lie, the basic premise, that the federal government can run short of its own sovereign dollars.
And then comes the real pitch to the suckers:
Now is the time to start making reasonable changes to Social Security rather than waiting until the last minute when the necessary changes become much more drastic.
Instead of discussing ways to expand a program whose funds are already strained,policymakers should be considering both spending and revenue changes to ensure the long-term health of this important program for millions of beneficiaries across the country.
To hide the truth from you, these con artists use the innocent-sounding phrase, “reasonable changes,” when they really mean: Cut Social Security benefits and increase the FICA taken from your paycheck.
And then they have the chutzpah to end with, “ensure the long-term health of this important program for millions of beneficiaries across the country.”
Please gimme a break. If these characters cared one whit about the “millions of beneficiaries,” they would demand benefit increases and tax cuts.
The fact of Monetary Sovereignty is this: You, and the rest of salaried Americans, could pay $0 FICA, while Social Security benefits were doubled, and still the federal government would not run short of dollars.
Why do you pay FICA? Why have Social Security benefits begun later and later? Why do organizations like CRFB lie to you again and again about mythical insolvency threats? Why even, was a complex, convoluted program like “Obamacare” necessary?
Because our political leaders are paid to lie by the rich, whose primary objective is to widen the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
The Gap is what makes the rich richer, and the wider that Gap, the richer they are.
So the rich bribe Congress (via campaign contributions); they bribe the media via ownership; they bribe the economists via contributions to universities and think tanks; and the rich pay the salaries of MacGuineas, Simpson, Bowles et al, and finally, the rich even bribe the Supreme Court justices with free vacations and other perks.
Bernie Sanders made a stab at narrowing the Gap, but he wasn’t believed by the very people who would have been helped most: The middle classes and the poor.
So now we are stuck with Hillary Clinton, who if she is like Barack Obama, will do very little to close the Gap, or worse yet, stuck with Donald Trump who with his ignorance and hubris, not only will do nothing to close the Gap, but who will destroy America’s economy.
It doesn’t need to be this way.  The federal government easily could provide Social Security and Medicare for every man, woman, and child in America.
The first step is for you and enough other people to understand and believe Monetary Sovereignty, and to demand the same of Congress. 
You need only to get up off your butt and make it happen.