Submitted by Illinoisnoki1 on Thu, 08/26/2010 - 14:01

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Alan Simpson's foot in mouth disease roils Obama's Debt Commission

President Obama's deficit reduction commission suffered a big setback yesterday as one of the co-chairs, former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, was reported to have made some highly insensitive comments about Social Security.

In an email to Ashley Carson, executive director of the Older Women's League, Simpson described Social Security as "a milk cow with 310 million t*ts."

In a letter release Wednesday afternoon, Simpson apologized after Carson blogged about the "milk cow" comments but the gaffe has spurred calls for his ouster and revived concerns about Simpson's suitability to oversee the deficit reduction commission.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive economic policy think-tank in Washington D.C. told Tech Ticker last month that appointing Simpson to run the deficit reduction commission "is like appointing someone you knew had racist views to head a civil rights commission." (Baker was also critical of the other co-chair Erskine Bowles.  A director on the board of Morgan Stanley (Wall Street bailout bank), Bowles served as Clinton's chief of staff from 1997 and 1998.