In a recent San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate op‐ed, Eugene Steuerle, Chair and Fellow at the Urban Institute, advocates lowering the heat on the debate over increasing Social Security’s “Retirement Age.” Let’s turn up the light. Here are why Mr. Steuerle’s “myths” are in fact true:

OWL members along with MoveOn.org members rallied nationwide this weekend outside of AmericaSpeaks events to protect Social Security.

This is the fifth installment of Social Security Works’ weekly livestream of the Closed Door Debt Commission. The best action is around 9:15am and 11:30am, right as members of the commission are entering and leaving.

This is the fourth installment of our weekly livestream of the Closed Door Debt Commission. The best action is around 9:15am and 11:30am, right as members of the commission are entering and leaving.

The progressive counter-attack against the President’s emerging “austerity” political strategy and program is beginning to emerge. In the last few days, we’ve seen posts by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson of Social Security Works, Jane Hamsher, Robert Kuttner, and Dean Baker writing against the thrust by the Administration, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and its network of related organizations, and the deficit hawks in the Congress, seemingly aimed at Social Security. These posts make or imply a number of points sometimes in the form of questions. They are:

— The commission is unaccountable.

— It meets in secret.

— Its members will keep their recommendations secret until after the election, and then will present them to a lame duck Congress that is itself unaccountable.

Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson Co-Directors of Social Security Works have written an article called “Has Obama created a Social Security ‘death panel’? In the article they raise questions about the composition, process, and intentions of the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and say:

”We write to raise questions and encourage press inquiry now, before the commission reports, at which point its recommendations could be on track and moving fast.”

And the questions they raise include:

”Q. Have the members of the Commission made up their minds, at least with respect to the broad outlines, making the whole exercise simply an effort by elected officials to escape political accountability?
Q. Why is the Commission apparently working so closely with billionaire Peter G. Peterson, who served in the Nixon administration and who has a clear ideological agenda?”

This is the third weekly livestream of the Closed Door Debt Commission brought to you by SocialSecurityWorks.org. The best action is around 9:15am and 11:30am, right as members of the commission are entering and leaving.

The Cat Food Commission – President Obama’s working group on the deficit stacked with people who want to cut social security and medicare, leading senior citizens to revert to eating cat food to get by – begins its first weekly meeting today on Capitol Hill.

While the group’s monthly meetings will be live streamed, it’s largely for show; the bulk of the group’s work will be carried out in weekly meetings held behind closed doors. So if the group’s work will be carried out in secret, activists have to find another way to show what’s happening to social security and medicare behind closed doors. That’s why the good folks at Social Security Works are standing outside the closed doors, live streaming the doors and who comes in an out.

This is the fifth installment in our Social Security Works series. So far, we have seen how Social Security works for America, how Social Security works for women, how Social Security works for people of color, how Social Security works for people with disabilities, and today we will show how Social Security works for Veterans.

This week the New York Times decided to scare the bejeezus out of everyone by publishing several articles with slanted statements about Social Security. I’d like to revisit some key points in Williams Walsh’s piece from March 24 – statements from her article are in bold below.