Advocate groups working to strengthen and protect Social Security are sounding the alarm about a potential back-room deal between Obama and Republicans on Social Security with the debt-ceiling and government funding fights looming. At least one Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, has threatened to take Social Security hostage, the beginning step in a potentially disastrous deal.
Maria Freese of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare said she thinks Social Security is "more at risk than it was in 2005,” when President George W. Bush proposed far-reaching changes to the program, including personal accounts. The plan was vigorously opposed by Democrats and liberal groups and never came up for a vote in Congress.
Now, with Social Security coming to the forefront once again, liberal groups are preparing a campaign to oppose any “backroom” deals on retirement benefits.
“What I am really afraid of is another deal behind closed doors,” said Nancy Altman, the co-director of Social Security Works. “At least with President Bush, he went around the country on a tour and presented his plan, and people didn’t like it.”
Both Altman and Freese said that it is unlikely there will be changes to Medicare and Medicaid this year, given the lingering polarization from last year's healthcare debate. They said Social Security is easier to tamper with and more likely to be targeted.
Freese and Altman’s groups already feel betrayed by Obama for backing a cut to the Social Security payroll tax that was approved during the lame-duck session. They worry that the cut will be extended indefinitely and erode Social Security's solvency.
There's precedent for this fear. The health insurance reform deals with for-profit hospitals and with pharmaceutical companies, the tax-cut deal that actually does jeopardize Social Security provide good reason to fear back-room dealmaking with this President. There's no question that Social Security is on the table, the President's deficit commission, the tax-cut deal, and too many public statements about it confirm that. The only "reform" the administration has been willing to rule out is privatization. Never mind that any cut to Social Security--from raising the retirement age to reducing benefits is a backdoor attempt at privatization. Those who can afford to invest retirement savings will have no other option. Those who can't will just have to suffer when they're old.
Given Social Security's foundational importance to the economic security of most of America, any changes to it have to be done in the open, with accountability from our President and our members of Congress.