Before people jump on Boehner, this is coming from the Senate. This would not make it constitutional.
There was a time that statement used to mean something.
No, of course not - the House makes this sort of call. At least at the moment. This is precisely why Peter Orszag called for Less Democracy in his recent New Republic article. Under his plan committees populated by small numbers of "experts" such as this one would make their recommendations to the President who would then present them to the combined Senate and House, who could only vote on the whole package and only defeat it through a joint resolution. Voila! Instantly that Republican-controlled House that used to make financial decisions is relegated to a back seat in the affair.
It should come as no surprise that Mr. Orszag is a former 0bama administration official. Dang that pesky ol' Constitution, we have to get the country moving again! Mussolini had a similar program, and with similar justifications.
Mr. Gale of Brookings - it often does seem to be Brookings, doesn't it? - offers us pure and distilled class warfare to justify dipping his fingers into other people's money. To him anything more than some mystic amount he considers an "adequate" retirement is merely a vehicle for rich people to avoid taxation. He'll tax your income before you tuck it under the mattress and when you take it out again he'll have a piece of it then, too. Die with it still under there and he'll still want his cut from your heirs. Try to give it to them and he'll tax it. Spend it on something to give to them and he'll tax it both times. All of this in the jolly game of "revenue enhancement".
One measure of just how far we've come down this corrupt and disgusting road is that a Tea Party member is so commonly castigated as "extremist" for the temerity of suggesting that the government doesn't really have a right to all the money it sees. Mr. Gale apparently thinks that it does, or at least all of the money that it can get away with expropriating under the rationale of an emergency it created. The answer is no.
Since when has that bothered the current administration or their congressional puppets or four members of the current supreme court?