About eight years ago, the Bush Administration launched an effort to "reform" Social Security by "privatizing" it. The idea was to shift employee payroll contributions from the federal Social Security trust fund to private, individual "retirement accounts" - giving them the ability to make their own decisions on "investing" their contributions and magically creating much larger retirement funds.
But Josh Marshall, head of the then fledgling Talking Points Memo (TPM) knew the flaws in the plan: First, once you stopped the full flow of funding into the federal fund, the amount of federal money available to pay benefits to those now retired or soon to retire would begin to shrivel. There was no way you could make that transition smoothly.
And secondly, aside from the change being a glorified gift to Wall Street through diverting this massive flow of employee contributions into the open market, it would be inherently risky. What would happen to those retired or about to retire if the market tanked and wiped out significant portions of their retirement fund? And how much would Wall Street skim off in the form of fund management fees?
So Marshall set forth on a mission. Details below the Orange Romney Ryan Medicare Plan logo.
From Wikipedia:
After the 2004 election, posts began to focus on the Bush administration's proposal to privatize Social Security. In addition to criticizing the substance of the proposals, Marshall argued that a unified front in the Democratic Party would deny Republicans political cover and force a loss for them on the Social Security issue. Talking Points Memo closely tracked the positions of members of Congress on the issue throughout 2005. It asked readers to monitor local media for comments from their own members of congress, and public categories were created for politicians on this issue: wavering Democrats were the "Faint-hearted Faction" and Republicans who doubted the President's plan were the "Conscience Caucus."
And the Marshall Plan was a major factor in the defeat of the Bush efforts to privatize Social Security. (Note: That doesn't mean the GOP ever gave up on the idea, but they are clearly not eager to try and raise it this election,
even though (as CNN noted today) Ryan is a major proponent of the idea.)
Ryan included a detailed plan to privatize Social Security in his budget proposal in 2010. Under that plan, he would allow workers to funnel an average of roughly 40% of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts.
Mitt Romney, who chose the Wisconsin lawmaker as his running mate on Saturday, has also voiced support for private accounts.
SNIP
But neither Ryan nor Romney have said much about private Social Security accounts lately. Ryan dropped it from his more recent budget proposals, while Romney doesn't mention it on his campaign Web site.
And fellow Kossacks, may I now suggest that the time has come to do the same thing with the Romney Ryan Medicare Plan that Josh helped do with Social Security privatization......
Make Congress Own It!....especially the GOP!!!
As I noted in a post last night:
(When Josh and his troops began pressing members of Congress to say where they stood on Social Security privatization) Some of them, obviously tried every trick they knew to avoid committing themselves one way or the other, but the pressure worked.
So I think a really smart ploy immediately would be for progressives to start pressuring all Congressional candidates NOW to answer the following:
If the Romney Ryan plan for converting Medicare to a voucher system were to come up for a vote in the next Congress, would you support it?
No fudging.....no "I have to see the details." Just tell us....Do you agree with the idea of making Medicare a voucher system?
Kossacks should write, phone, e-mail and attend rallies, and press their Senators and Congressman for answers to this question.
Then keep a running tally of where individual members of Congress stand on the issue and post it prominently on Kos (and other progressive blogs as well.) Lots of GOP candidates for Senate AND House are already running away from the Romney Ryan plan as toxic to their re-election hopes (Scott Brown in MA, Rehberg in MT for example.)
Imagine the problems it will create for Romney if, early in the fall campaign it is clear that he and Ryan would never have enough votes to actually pass the program which they have made the signature element of their campaign. And it also raises chances for Democrats to win more seats and even (please make it so) regain a House majority in the bargain.
If Romney Ryan clearly lack support for their core proposal, then the question becomes.....Why bother to elect them?
The only obvious answer is More tax cuts for the rich.
Given that the Ryan budget would cut Romney's tax rate to 0.82%, that makes their new campaign slogan 1% Taxes for the 1%