Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called for a commission modeled on Simpson-Bowles — a deficit reduction panel created and ignored by President Obama — to develop a plan to reform Social Security.
“We should put together something like a Simpson-Bowles Commission to report back to us for the solvency of Social Security,” Durbin said on Morning Joe. “Right now it’s going to last for another 22 years untouched, but we have to make it stronger, longer.” Durbin served on the Simpson-Bowles Commission and voted for its proposals, but Obama buried the commission’s plan.
The Illinois senator said he’s taking inspiration, during these fiscal cliff negotiations, from Hollywood’s latest movie about Abraham Lincoln.
“If you saw the Spielberg Lincoln movie, when Lincoln was explaining what the Civil War was all about, he says ‘we want to prove that democracy is not chaos,’ and that’s what we have to prove in this generation — thank goodness, without the loss of life, but with the challenge of our time,” Durbin said.
