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Wall Street Propaganda: Blame Social Security
The President’s Fiscal Commission is holding its second pubic meeting today and when commission members say “everything is in the table,” the biggest things they are talking about are Social Security and Medicare.
The commission was created by an Executive Order from President Obama in February after a move to create a commission with much broader powers failed in the Senate. The current commission’s charge is to propose ways to address the nation’s growing debt. The 18-member commission will meet throughout the year and then present its recommendations to Obama after the fall elections. (For more information, visit Social Security Works.)
Conservative groups and Wall Street insiders, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR),
are spending more than $1 billion dollars to convince the public that slashing these programs [Social Security and Medicare] is the only way to protect our children and grandchildren from poverty.
But while we will see and hear more deficit horror stories from the corporate media and right-wing front groups, Baker says that as they “ramp up their anti-Social Security and Medicare crusade, it is important to remember, it’s just Wall Street propaganda.”
As William Greider recently pointed at The Nation (subscription required):
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.
According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, most of the deficit over the next 10 years will come from the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the rich, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the staggering economy and rising heath care costs–although the new health care reform law is expected to rein much of those costs. Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
The main driver of the recent increases in deficit projections is worsening economic conditions–in short, the present deficit crisis is largely a symptom of the jobs crisis.
Barbara Kennelly. President of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM), says if the “commission’s goal is to get our nation’s fiscal house in order then its attention should be on programs which contribute to our debt and the revenue reforms necessary to improve the federal balance sheet.”
Unfortunately, too much attention thus far has been focused on using Social Security as the piggybank for fiscal reform. Let’s be clear about this, Social Security has not contributed one dime to our current fiscal woes because that money was contributed by America’s workers over decades. Cutting benefits under the guise of “fiscal responsibility” is anything but responsible during a time when retirees and near retirees are still suffering the effects of this recession.
Trumka says that when the commission finishes its deliberations in December, “Congress should not merely rubberstamp its recommendations.”
Legislation of the magnitude likely to be proposed should be considered under the regular congressional process… Under no circumstances should deficit alarmists be allowed to circumvent the regular democratic process to advance their long-standing agenda of gutting Medicare and Social Security.
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14 Comments
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President Obama refers to Social Security as an “entitlement program.” It is NOT, and that’s NOT A GOOD SIGN. I’m sorry but we working people have paid into it ever since we hit a time clock. We have not squandered it, that disgrace has been accomplished by our juvenile elected officials who are owned and operated by the moneyed corporate interests. Here’s their “plan” in a nutshell, cut SSI, raise the minimum retirement age for us to collect so we are forced to work TILL WE DROP DEAD. Time for systemic change. US LABOR PARTY.
I sure hope someone is reading this. This is incredibly important. Far from “saving our children from poverty,” the proposed “reforms” of Social Security will guarantee our children spend their old age in poverty.
And it is not necessary. Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security pays for itself. That is you pay for it. You pay for your own retirement. Social Security is insurance that guarantees you can retire at 67 (or 62 with a reduced benefit) whatever else happens in your life. It also will pay if you get disabled or pay your dependents if you die.
IF the next generation lives longer than the last they will need to pay a tiny bit more for this insurance. A tax increase that amounts to twenty cents per week in today’s money, each year, will close that “5 Trillion Dollar Unfunded Deficit!!” That’s because there are two hundred million people paying that tax over the next seventy five years. It adds up.
But that’s the one thing they don’t want you to think about. Cut benefits they say. Raise the retirement age (you won’t want to work longer even if you are going to live longer, and there is no guarantee of that yet), means test it (you won’t like your visits to the government welfare office), or, seductively, “tax the rich”… but the rich won’t like that, and they won’t rest until they kill Social Security.
Besides the whole glory of Social Security is that it is workers paying for their own retirement. All the government does is manage the insurance, and guarantee your savings are safe from inflation and market losses.
YOU MUST STOP THEM from “fixing” Social Security. They are liars and they do not mean to do you good.
Cut the Defense Budget(contradiction in terms)to half.
Get rid of all these interns that work for our Senators and Representatives and make them do their job.
BAN all lobbyists from 5 miles of the White House.
Bring our troops home and give the Iraqis back their natural resources.
Force retirement on all these Officers of the Military and promote the youth of our miltary.
Make anyone who makes over 1 million dollars a year pay 40% capital gains tax on all money above the 1 million.
I can go on and on but I’ve said enough!!
The AFL-CIO must be the leading voice of opposition to the slicing/dicing of Social Security and Medicare.You must cast aside some of your allegiances in the Democratic Party in this battle .You took on Bush/Santorum sucessfully.No expenditure is too much in your defense of these two programs for the working class and the underclass.This will be the greatest setback since FDR initiaied the New Deal,if Wall Street and their corporate media wags and the political financial sycophants of both political parties are successful.
When health care reform was passed, it raised the necessary funds by cutting Medicare. There was an amendment by John McCain not to cut Medicare, but that amendment was defeated.
As far as health care reform is concerned, they threw senior citizens under the bus. Now that we have health care reform, the end result of it, is substantial cuts to Medicare. The Democrats bear responsibility for cutting Medicare.
In particular, they cut back on funding Medicare Advantage plans. These plans allowed people to have a low deductable health care, with part of Medicare payments subsidizing it. AARP wanted those cuts, so people would be forced into their high cost Medi-Gap plans, and AARP would pocket the money.
The Obama administration bears responsibility for this. The cuts to payments to doctors and hospitals must be reversed, as well as the cuts to Medicare Advantage plans must be reversed.
Please hold the Obama adminstration accountable for cuts to Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans. Hopefully, you will do this.
This countryshould ttake a tip from the E.U. They are taxing the banks for money for trust funds incase they have to get bailed out again.and leaving revenues for retirees and disabled alone
In 1986 there was a Republican President (Reagan). Republicans controlled the Senate, and Democrats controlled the House. That year the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was passed, which reduced the maximum tax rate on earned income (wages and self-employment income) from 50% to 28%. The same Act decreed that all income, including dividends and capital gains, would be taxed at the same rates as earned income. No change was made to the 15.3% Social Security and Medicare tax on all earned income from the first dollar earned (the Social Security tax is capped at an amount that most working people never exceed).
The Bush tax cuts reduced the tax rate on dividends and capital gains to a maximum of 15%. To put that into perspective, a rich person receiving millions of dividends and capital gains but no earned (ordinary) income had a tax rate less than the 15.3% Social Security and Medicare tax on a working person’s earnings even if that working person did not earn enough to pay any income tax.
Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in America, said it best when said the tax system was fundamentally unfair because his secretary’s income tax rate was higher than his tax rate.
peter peterson, alan simpson et al will make the disingenuous arguement that the 2.5 trillion has been spent and therefore we have to borrow it to pay soc sec u rity benefits in the future. to avod the borrowing they propose cutting benefits–in effect reneging on the gvt bonds in the trust fund. they don’t propose reneging on government bonds–of coursenot, that’s where at least part of their fortune is.
Gee, doesn’t this sound familar? If I remember correctly, this was said to us back in the thirties when social security was first proposed. If, at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.
well, i see next day’s blog doesn’t even mention this. so SS was the crisis of the day. now it’s on to other things. attention span of a gnat.
or is it that the only purpose of the blog is to create anxiety and win votes, while the policies go ahead and do what they were going to do anyway?
it looks as if Obama is about to betray the New Deal and sell Social Security to Wall Street. Is AFL-CIO going to actually DO anything about it?
Good question Coberly. Inaction speaks louder than words, and that’s the status quo. Here’s an answer-US LABOR PARTY backed by Organized Labor.
Is Social Security really SAFE from Republicans?, from Employer
Associations?, from the BIG Chamber of Commerce?, from the
FOX and their Friends? The first week of June 2010, ex-President
Bush stated that his biggest dissapointment was not the phony
War of Iraq, it was that he did NOT kill Social Security! The Vice
President kept “Loading” the kill gun, but, and I say, Thank God!,
their filthy unAmerican actions fell through. BUT do not sit on your
chair, smiling, they are still doing everything they can to kill
Social Security. Keep your ears and eyes open. Pray!
There are a few of us; WW II Vets, Union Men & Women, now out
of the Job Force, We fought Over there and Here for the Right to
Live & Work as Human Beings as Union People. Should the Rich
mostly Republicans take our Social Security & Medicare away or
mess It up, ….Remember the Beautiful “Man” that the SAME
KIND OF PEOPLE HUNG ON A CROSS?