Columbia Journalism Review is on the Social Security fact-checking beat, documenting zombie Social Security lies in the traditional media.
If there were prizes given for the most one-sided, misleading story about Social Security this year, a segment aired on the CBS Evening News before Thanksgiving would make a great candidate.
In a breathless recitation of the horrors befalling the system, CBS painted a grim picture of Social Security, using scare words and phrases like “the system is headed for a crisis,” “the government is confronting a painful reality,” and “there’s no debating that we’re running out of time.” How’s that for opinion journalism on a news show?
Perhaps to substantiate the segment’s conclusions, CBS piled on quotes from those people in favor of cutting Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age. Here was Andrew Biggs, currently a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, saying: “Americans are living longer, but they’re retiring earlier and saving less. Something in that equation has to give.” Biggs was a deputy Social Security commissioner in the Bush II administration and a Social Security analyst at the Cato Institute, which has been a leader in the efforts to privatize the system. CBS did not mention those credentials....
Then came Erskine Bowles, the co-chair of the president’s deficit commission, who said: “We as a country have made promises we can’t keep.” Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, who will chair the House Budget Committee come January, offered his opinion that raising the retirement age is “one of the easier things to do to make this thing work,” but he told CBS “we shouldn’t do it on current retirees.” Huh? They are already retired and receiving benefits. No? He then advised that he would peg the retirement age to longevity. “So for my generation the retirement age will be sixty-seven,” and would move on down so “it wouldn’t reach seventy until the year 2103.” Fact check again. In 1983, Congress already raised the retirement age to sixty-seven for those in Ryan’s generation....
The end of last week’s segment gave a brief nod to one consequence of raising the retirement age, noting that a government study found that increasing the age for full benefits would hurt poor workers the most. By then, viewers would have gotten a one-sided picture and may have missed the kicker: “Raising the retirement age alone won’t solve Social Security’s problems. Most reform plans also call for higher payroll taxes on the wealthy and cuts in benefits.”
What's a little more poverty for the people who are already poor? They're used to it. This is the conventional wisdom in the Village, filtering out via the traditional media and the result of a decades-long effort by conservatives to destroy Social Security. And it's worked. Erskine Bowles, after all, is the Democratic co-chair of the catfood commission. The Very Serious People all believe that Social Security is on the verge of collapse, despite all evidence to the contrary.