Lately quite a few papers, mainly the WSJ and the like, have started running stories about Social Security. The ones I've seen fall into two categories, 1) that current recipients will receive less in benefits than they paid in, 2) that the trust fund is rapidly moving toward depletion unless something is done. These are clearly crafted by the conservative media to begin to rattle the public and to soften the electorate up for cuts in future benefits.
It seems that this would be a great time for the Democratic Party, if there still is a party, I can't seem to see any evidence of it anywhere outside of the Presidential election, to begin running ads that remind citizens, and hopefully voters that just 12 years ago our country had a substantial budgetary surplus. A surplus that could have been used to address many of our social, environmental, and economic problems including the solvency of Social Security and Medicare. Democrats need to remind voters that this surplus was, to some degree, a demonstration of the economic leadership of the Democratic party which had identified right mix of taxes and expenditures and that Republicans destroyed that surplus through tax cuts for the rich and unnecessary wars around the world.
Why can't the Democratic party begin reminding citizens what the Republican administrations of Georgie Bush did to our economic security. Instead of fighting holding actions trying to avoid discussions of the national debt problem.