Women’s groups press Obama to fire Simpson

“The
problem lurking behind all of this is President Obama,” said Terry
O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), during a
conference call Friday. “I find this deeply disturbing that he has not
fired Alan Simpson.”

The calls
on Obama to fire Simpson followed an e-mail the commission co-chairman sent to
the head of the Older Women’s League. Simpson said Social Security needed to be
reformed because it had “reached a point now where it’s like a milk
cow with 310 million tits!”

“Call
when you get honest work!” added Simpson, who served as a senator from
Wyoming and as a Republican whip.

O’Neill
said the president should have acted as soon as he found out about Simpson’s
“abusive and misleading” e-mail.

“He
should have stepped up and said, ‘I know women elected me to office, and I know
Simpson has gone beyond the pale and needs to be removed,’ ” she
said. 

Liberals
have been critical of the White House fiscal commission since Obama created it
last spring, fearing that it could lead to cuts in entitlement programs that
seniors, the middle class and the poor rely on. The left has increased
criticism of the bipartisan panel, tasked with producing a deficit-reduction
plan, since Simpson’s controversial remarks.

“Mr.
Simpson has demonstrated for decades a consistent and offensive attitude toward
seniors and women,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), on Friday’s
conference call. “He needs to be removed, and with that removal, we also
bring into question the function, purpose and eventual product of this
commission.”

The latest flap between Obama and
liberal groups follows the controversy surrounding White House press secretary
Robert Gibbs’s comments that the “professional left” will never be
satisfied with Obama. Groups on the left have been frustrated with the
president over healthcare reform, gays in the military and several other
issues.  

Simpson’s controversial remarks were
made in an e-mail to Ashley Carson, head of the Older Women’s League.
He apologized to Carson in a letter Wednesday. 

“I
can see that my remarks have caused you anguish, and that was not my
intention,” he said. “I certainly did not intend to diminish your
hard work for the Older Women’s League. I know you care deeply about
strengthening Social Security, and so do I, just as deeply.”

Liberals questioned the decision to name Simpson as the co-chairman of the commission soon after Obama announced it. 

Carson’s group said Simpson has made sexist remarks before. In 1991, Simpson dismissed Anita Hill’s allegations that she was sexually harassed by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and said she would face “real harassment” during the Senate nomination debate.

“She will be injured and destroyed and belittled and
hounded and harassed, real harassment, different from the sexual kind, just
plain old Washington-variety harassment, which is pretty unique in
itself,” Simpson told reporters in October 1991.