House Republicans Pitch a Plan to Cut Social Security to Billionaire Donor Harlan Crow

This Monday, House Republicans held a hearing focused on creating a closed-door commission to cut Social Security and Medicare. The hearing was for an audience of one: billionaire donor Harlan Crow.

That’s the same Harlan Crow who infamously treated Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to lavish vacations, along with donating millions of dollars to Republican candidates and causes.

Republicans wanted to keep the hearing quiet, so they held it far from Washington DC. This was a “field hearing,” held all the way in Dallas, Texas. Specifically, it was held at Old Parkland, a “business campus” owned by none other than Harlan Crow.

Crow and his friends will do anything to cut our hard-earned Social Security benefits so that they never have to pay their fair share into the system.

Normally, when Congress holds a field hearing, they are seeking testimony from members of the general public. But when I showed up with Texas seniors and people with disabilities, they refused to let us in. Medically vulnerable people were forced to wait outside in 100°F heat.

Republicans claimed that there were only three chairs available for members of the public. That was a lie. When I finally made it into the room, there was plenty of space. And while there were “no seats available” for seniors and people with disabilities, guess who got one? Harlan Crow.

I called out the hearing for what it was: a farce designed to cut Social Security, even though Social Security doesn’t add a single penny to the debt. I reminded Republicans that the real driver of the debt is tax breaks for billionaires like Harlan Crow. I was promptly escorted out by police

Michelle H. Davis, author of the Substack Lone Star Left, was denied a seat. So she went home and watched the entire three-hour hearing. Davis writes that Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) ended the hearing by personally thanking Harlan Crow:

Arrington turned, and addressed Harlan by first name, called him "friend" and "great patriot," thanked "his family," and joked about moving every future Budget Committee hearing to Old Parkland permanently.

Davis also found that several members of the House Budget Committee, including Arrington, have received substantial donations from Crow.

As witnesses, the Republicans brought in retired Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who were pushing an infamous fast-track bill to avoid political accountability for cutting our earned benefits. Both this hearing and the commission itself are mechanisms to manufacture a consensus that does not exist in the American people. That’s why they try so hard to silence the voices of real Americans.

Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made the argument for a commission in terms that explicitly laid out the cowardice of our political class:

I think there would be nothing better than if a group of elected members on the budget committee were willing to sit down and develop a comprehensive approach to deficit reduction. That would be great. But I also understand the politics of the time... the politics of both sides would basically stab you in the back. I mean that's a reality. But that doesn't mean that you walk away from the problem.

But Panetta misstates what the two sides are. Voters for both parties will revolt at any attempt to cut Social Security, while the Wall Street and Big Tech megadonors who fund Republicans are the ones who repeatedly insist that it must be done.

The truth is, nobody wants to cut Social Security benefits except for a handful of Republicans and the billionaires on Wall Street who tell them what to do. That’s why it’s no surprise that this farce of a hearing was all for the benefit of billionaire donor Harlan Crow.

If Republicans want to cut our earned benefits, the American people deserve for them to tell us that to our faces, rather than weaseling around the job they were elected to do, and for which they earn a handsome salary. These politicians are afraid to do that because Americans are so overwhelmingly opposed to Social Security cuts.

Billionaires like Harlan Crow want Social Security cuts by any means necessary because once benefits are cut, they can stop worrying that we will finally make them pay their fair share.

We’ve been fighting commissions for a long time. I got started with Social Security Works live streaming the closed door behind which the 2010 Bowles-Simpson commission discussed its proposals to cut Social Security. Eventually, commission co-chair Alan Simpson stepped out from behind his closed door and gave an impromptu interview in which he called Social Security beneficiaries “the lesser people.”

Sixteen years later, that’s still how Republicans and their billionaire donors view seniors and people with disabilities. Crow and his friends will do anything to cut our hard-earned Social Security benefits so that they never have to pay their fair share into the system. But this week, we crashed Crow’s private hearing and reminded the billionaires that we’re never going to let that happen.