In 1997 John Hess wrote at FAIR that he wondered if Social Security could survive another rescue. I thought that was well said.
Here We Go Again
"The rescue of Social Security has been a staple of American journalism for 20 years now—a story all the more remarkable in that Social Security has never been in peril except from its rescuers.
The rescues have all been based on faulty arithmetic. First, in 1977, the rescuers humbly confessed that they had made a mistake in adjusting benefits to inflation, as a result of which Social Security was threatening to go broke. (They never say the Army is threatening to "go broke," only that it needs more money to do the job that it's asked to do.) Not to worry. Amid the Yuletide hosannas of our massed punditry, our leaders found the courage to enact a correction that would, they swore, assure solvency into the 21st Century.
...A bipartisan commission under Alan Greenspan went to work on the numbers, while the media developed an unprecedented campaign of vilification of the elderly. On magazine covers, in cartoons and columns and on broadcast commentaries innumerable, they were depicted as hogs, vampires, sharks, gorillas and card sharps scooping up the sustenance of the young. While the investment banker Peter G. Peterson led the media legions, Greenspan fabricated a hurricane warning. Multiplying one false assumption by another (for example, he assumed that the C.P.I. would rise nearly three times as fast as it actually did rise, while his private firm was forecasting an even smaller increase), he predicted that Social Security would go bankrupt in 1983."
I remember hearing my grandparents talk about how Social Security changed their lives. They were victims of the depression and of my grandfather's disability. He had to quit his job. Until Social Security there were few other options to help families survive. As each of their children grew up, they got a job, contributed to the household, and managed to get themselves through college. But Social Security gave them hope.
There was an article in the New York Times in 2005 about life before Social Security.
Life Before Social Security; 'A Great Calamity Has Come Upon Us
"BY 1934, it was not hard to make the case for Social Security. The Great Depression had devastated employment, pensions, the stock market and savings. Many older Americans, and their beleaguered children with families of their own, found themselves suddenly and shockingly in economic freefall.
''A great calamity has come upon us, and seemingly no cause of our own,'' declared a 69-year-old architect, one of millions of Americans who wrote to President and Mrs. Roosevelt, pleading for help. ''It has swept away what little savings we had accumulated and we are left in a condition that is impossible for us to correct.''
Before the creation of Social Security, some Americans had private or state pensions, but most supported themselves into old age by working. The 1930 census, for example, found 58 percent of men over 65 still in the workforce; in contrast, by 2002, the figure was 18 percent.
The elderly also relied heavily on their families. ''Children, friends and relatives have borne and still carry the major cost of supporting the aged,'' the Committee on Economic Security, the Roosevelt administration panel that developed Social Security, reported in 1935. ''Several of the state surveys have disclosed that from 30 to 50 percent of the people over 65 years of age were being supported in this way."
Some of the comments about Social Security by advisors in the think tanks advising our party were just plain mean. Will Marshall of DLC/PPI even attacked the Campaign for America's Future.
Social Security Pledge Failed Democrats
"Like camp meeting converts swearing off demon rum, nearly every Democratic candidate for Congress dutifully took the Pledge. They vowed to never, ever allow working Americans to divert some portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts. In leftish circles, this goes by the name of "privatization" and is regarded as the ultimate political thought crime.
..The pledge is the brainchild of the Campaign for America's Future, a union-backed organization that is to Social Security and Medicare what the Inquisition was to medieval Christiandom. Its latter-day Torquemadas enforce New Deal-Great Society orthodoxy and ferret out heresy with religious zeal."
William Greider at The Nation in 2010 had a lot to say about the deficit commission and how it was set up.
Whacking the Old Folks
"What's extraordinary about this assault on Social Security is that a Democratic president is leading it. Obama is arm in arm with GOP conservatives like Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson, who for decades has demonized Social Security as a grave threat to the Republic and has spread some $12 million among economists, think tanks, foundations and assorted front groups to sell his case. If Obama pulls the deal off, this will be his version of "Nixon goes to China"—a leader proving his manhood by going against his party's convictions. Even if he fails, the president will get some protective cover on the deficit issue. After all, he is targeting Big Government's most beloved and trusted program—the New Deal's most prominent pillar.
Obama's initiative rests on two falsehoods spread by Peterson's propaganda—the notion that Social Security somehow contributes to the swollen federal deficits and that cutting benefits will address this problem. Obama and his advisers do not say this in so many words, but their rhetoric implies that Social Security is a big source of the deficit problem. Major media promote the same falsehoods. Here is what the media don't tell you: Social Security has accumulated a massive surplus—$2.5 trillion now, rising to $4.3 trillion by 2023. This vast wealth was collected over many years from workers under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) to pay in advance for baby boom retirements. The money will cover all benefits until the 2040s—unless Congress double-crosses workers by changing the rules. This nest egg does not belong to the government; it belongs to the people who paid for it. FICA is not a tax but involuntary savings."
One of the most frustrating thing to me is that the now president of the Third Way think tank, one of the policy shops for Democrats....wrote an article in 1995 calling for Social Security to go private for all but the needy. This is from the L.A. Times in 1995 by Jon Cowan.
Current payout levels can't be sustained. Let the retirement savings system go private for all but the needy.
"The time has come to reinvent Social Security based on a "cut and privatize" approach that will be fair to all age groups. This reinvention should be based on three principles:
* Start immediately to lower boomers' expectations of the returns they will get and encourage them to increase private savings. My generation and my kids' will have to pay upward of 30% of our income in payroll taxes to finance the boomers' retirement at today's benefit levels. That's unreasonable and unworkable. Instead, we'll have to dramatically slash benefits to stay solvent, and we should let folks know now what to expect when the ax falls.
* Separate out the welfare portion of Social Security and pay out poverty benefits to today's--and tomorrow's--needy seniors from general government revenues. In some cases, benefits will have to increase as we keep our commitment to protect America's elderly from poverty; at the same time, benefits will have to be cut to seniors who are well-off. Yes, we'll be breaking our commitment to folks who have paid in for decades, but that was not a contract my generation signed, and it's not one that America can afford to fulfill.
* Lower the Social Security payroll tax to 10% and give workers the option of putting their money into private pension programs that offer far higher returns and sounder prospects than today's Social Security system."
That's the same Jon Cowan who in 1993 wrote a letter to "Grandma and Grandpa" in the Chicago Tribune.
He as much as asked them to stop being selfish.
"We are not ungrateful. We respect and value the sacrifices you've made for our country and have no desire to take money away from those in need. But our generation is in trouble. We were educated in a collapsing school system. Our incomes and skill levels are lower than any previous generation-by the year 2000 over one-third of younger Americans will be living in poverty. And we will be the first Americans to inherit a lower standard of living than our parents.
We're not asking that your generation solve all our problems. And there certainly are many other programs that also must be cut to get the deficit under control. But Social Security must be considered, just like everything else in the budget."
And that is the guy whose group is today offering advice to our Democrats. Big money involved. Sounds like too many might be listening.
