This has probably been said before but here it goes again. We boomers paid our fair share to Social Security. Alan Greenspan et al. jacked the FICA up in 1983 and we've been paying it for the last 21 years. The tax hike (yes that's right, as a bonus you get to talk about Reagan's tax HIKE and how he at least got one thing right) was necessary and that is why SS is in such good shape now. We did our part so don't mess with SS! I swear that if the Dems screw this one up then maybe we do need a new party.
I didn't even vote for Ron Wyden this time because he has become a total appeaser (along with the fact that he only had token opposition). Wyden likes to make great hay out his bipartisan (isn't that another word for date rape) relation with our Repub Senator and I guess it plays well in the hinterland, which is where I happen to live, but it's starting to make me sick. I mean he supports doing away with the estate tax (you know, the death tax) and he supported the Medicare `reform' bill with the old crap about half a loaf. I am sorry but that is not good enough, not after four years of being railroaded. This is the Dems moment of truth, if we cannot win this against the Corp. Media and the outright lies then how are we going to fight for basic civil rights or oppose an unqualified judicial nominee or against another conflict based on a trumped up intelligence.
We all know the facts on SS, more than enough money from taxes up to (at least) 2018, trust funded up to 2052 (according to the CBO, which always has the better prediction) and then still paying 70-80% of benefits after that. Yeah, we may need to beef up the tax base at some point but even Moynihan and others said that making predictions beyond 25 years was probably stupid, in fact the date of SS `insolvency' has been increasing for the last decade. If the Dems cannot fight this more effectively than the Repubs fought the health care plan back in 1994 then it is time to form a new party because not only is this a golden opportunity to score some political points but this is the main piece of the safety net left intact, if they weaken this then what is the hope of actually moving forward on health care someday. Back prior to the Repub convention I wrote my first ever diary on their plans to privatize SS and said that if Kerry "cannot nail Bush on privatizing Social Security than I think the outlook does not look good", isn't it funny how we didn't really hear very much about this `crisis' until after the election. To quote the Jeff Goldblum character in Jurassic Park `I hate it when I am always right'.