Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker: Let's Be Honest About Social Security
Roundup: Media's TakePOLLS CAN provide important guidance for politicians, but there are times when it is foolish and dangerous to rely on a temporarily misinformed public for a political compass. The current debate over Social Security provides one of the most compelling examples in modern history of the pitfalls of poll-driven political strategy.
On Thursday two leading Democratic strategists, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, publicly took their party to task for their ''just say no" approach to President Bush's proposed privatization and benefit cuts. ''To say there is no problem simply puts Democrats out of the conversation for the great majority of the country that want political leaders to secure this very important government retirement program," they warned. ''Voters are looking for reform, change, and new ideas, but Democrats seem stuck in concrete."
Stuck, indeed. The more appropriate metaphor would be that they are holding their ground and refusing to surrender to a president who is once again manufacturing a ''crisis" for a political purpose. And why should they do otherwise, when this strategy is clearly working?
Let's start with the facts. According to the numbers President Bush is using, Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 37 years without any changes at all. Even if nothing were done by 2043, the program would still pay a higher real (adjusted for inflation) benefit than what people receive today.
And even looking into the science-fiction future of the Social Security Trustees' 75-year planning period, the projected shortfall is less than what we fixed in each one of the decades of the '50s, '60s, and '80s. In other words, according to the president's own numbers, Social Security is financially stronger today than it has been throughout most of its history. If we use the projections of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, it's even better: Social Security is rock-solid for nearly half a century....
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel