Friday in St. Louis a coalition of groups held a rally outside the offices of Senator Claire McCaskill (D) to express their concerns about proposed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

During the rally representatives of the coalition met with Senator McCaskill. This group included the American Federation of Government Employees, the Mutual Of Omaha plan G, Missouri Jobs with Justice, Paraquad, Missouri Budget Project, Metropolitan Congregations United, GRO-Grass Roots Organizing, Missouri Health Care for All, and Missouri Pro-Vote.

Approximately two hundred people attended the rally.

@BGinKC Blue Girl

Lots of honking and waving, haven’t seen a single person flip us off. http://twitpic.com/5cygef

7 hours ago

@BGinKC Blue Girl

Props to StL…These folks over here know how to throw a protest rally. http://twitpic.com/5cyhzw

7 hours ago

Signing the petition.

Greeting sympathetic passers by.

Organized labor working for social justice.

The petition.

After their meeting with Senator McCaskill a representative of the coalition addressed the crowd outside the senator’s office.

Good grief, this nonsense is just exhausting. Nothing is ever settled with these people, they have been coming after Social Security for 75 years, and they just don’t quit, no matter how many times they get chased down with walkers and eaten alive by gray panthers. It’s like they are programmed or genetically manipulated, like one of those creepy super-soldiers from science fiction that can’t stop fighting after the war is over, even though they recognize the reality.

Nah, I give them too much credit in that scenario. They are just zombie-nihilists and Social Security is the brain they are driven to eat.

To prove the charges I just filed against them, I offer into evidence Rep. Pete Sessions, of Texas.

House Republicans on Friday introduced legislation that would allow workers to partially opt out of Social Security immediately, and fully opt out after 15 years.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, and several other Republicans introduced the Savings Account for Every American (SAFE) Act. Under the bill, workers would immediately have 6.2 percent of their wages sent to a “SAFE” account each year.

That would take the place of the 6.2 percent the workers now contributed to Social Security.

Another 6.2% is sent to Social Security by employers. Under the Sessions bill, employers would continue to make this matching contribution to Social Security, but after 15 years, employers could also send that amount to the employee’s SAFE account.

Sessions said this transition to a private retirement savings option is needed because Social Security last year began paying out more money than it took in.

“Our nation’s Social Security Trust Fund is depleting at an alarming rate, and failure to implement immediate reforms endangers the ability of Americans to plan for their retirement with the options and certainty they deserve,” Sessions said. “To simply maintain the status quo would weaken American competitiveness by adding more unsustainable debt and insolvent entitlements to our economy when we can least afford it.”

Sigh. They just keep telling the zombie-lie about the trust fund. Okay, let’s do this once more, this time with feeling: There is no Social Security crisis. The trust fund he is pretending to be panicked about was established to deal with the baby boom generation that started retiring and coming into the system this year. It was built up over the last three decades for this very purpose. And Sessions knows this full well. When one tells an untruth that doesn’t square with reality and one knows one is telling an untruth, that is a lie and the person doing the lying is what is known, in the common vernacular, as a liar. Pete Sessions is, therefore, a liar. This is now an established fact, verified by empirical evidence.

The legislation is couched in inoccuous, friendly even,  terms like “employee choice” but the part that they don’t mention and the press hasn’t bothered to report is what would happen if legislation like this were to pass…it would collapse the system.

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. If large numbers of people “opted out” then it would collapse — which is really what the privatizers want, they just can’t come right out and say that.

Now let’s be realistic. This legislation is not going anywhere so long as Democrats control one chamber of Congress and the Presidency. Privatizing Ryan left Social Security out of his crosshairs because even he knows that Social Security privatization is a non-starter. It’s only been six years since Bush floated his privatization scheme, and he never recovered politically from the attempt. The bill has only attracted a handful of co-sponsors and they could all be accurately described as “the epitome of wingnuttery.” There is no rush to bring it to the floor for a vote, and I seriously doubt John Boehner lets one take place, not with the Medicare fiasco still nipping at his heels and threatening the republican majority in the House.

But that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from making hay out of it anyway.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (N.Y.) on Tuesday predicted that House Republican plans to let workers opt out of Social Security would fail as voters realize how it will threaten their retirement.

“Seniors who have paid into Social Security through a lifetime of hard work shouldn’t end up in a risky privatization scheme to gamble their retirement on Wall Street,” Israel said. “The public has rejected this kind of Social Security privatization in the past and will again.”

Israel accused Republicans of looking to resolve the government’s fiscal crisis by scaling back Medicare and Social Security while ignoring higher corporate taxes.

“Everyone agrees we need to tighten our belt, but why do out-of-touch Republicans insist on tightening it around our retirees without asking Big Oil companies for one dime of sacrifice?” he asked.

That’s all well and good, and Israel is correct in leveling the charge. But there is another angle I would like to see the Democrats pursuing here, and that is how privatizing the programs that we have established for retirees is of a piece with the GOP’s war on women, because any privatization scheme would hit women especially hard.

Social Security is the single most effective program to keep women out of poverty in their retirement years that the nation has ever created.

Here are some facts about women and Social Security that you may not know, but should.

• 26% of women aged 65-69 are reliant upon Social Security for virtually all of their income (90% or more) and that number climbs as women age.

• Although women are more reliant on Social Security to provide their basic needs in retirement, men receive benefits that are about 25% more than those of women. The average benefit for a woman is around $12,000 per year, while for men it is about $16,000 per year.

• This is especially important for women, because far more American women than men — 11% versus 7% — lived in poverty in 2009 (the last year for which complete numbers are available.)

• It becomes even more important for people who live alone. When older people live alone, the likelihood that they live in poverty jumps dramatically, to 17% for women and to 12% for men.

• Minority women are hit especially hard, with more than 20% of African-American, Hispanic and Native American women 65 and over living in poverty. The poverty rate is 8% for non-Hispanic white females in this age group, and 15% for Asian women.

• Without Social Security, one half of all women over 65 and two-thirds of women over 65 who live alone would live in poverty.

• 3.1. million children received Social Security survivors benefits after losing the support of a parent to death or disability, and those benefits lifted 1.1 million of those children out of poverty.

Since Social Security became the law of the land in 1935, it has proven extremely effective at standing between women and the proverbial poor house, and that is not a pattern that shows any signs of changing any time soon. While it is true that the  gender-iniquities that were part of the program at it’s inception have been righted, women are still playing catch-up. Much of the labor performed by women is uncompensated, and therefore doesn’t pay anything in to the program for her to draw on later. Women still sacrifice large amounts of their prime earning time t
o provide care for young children, aging parents and eventually young grandchildren. This negatively impacts the amount of monthly benefit they receive in retirement — and if republican efforts to gut Medicare and Medicaid see the light of day, the amount of uncompensated work women do will increase dramatically.  What do the privatizers think will happen to women who could not simultaneously care for their families and pay into the system? They certainly aren’t going to deliver us delayed compensation by paying in for us what would be paid in if our labor was compensated.

I sincerely believe that they are intentionally coming after us uppity sluts between 45 and 55. We didn’t burn our bras. We burned the hand of anyone who touched us in an inappropriate way. They’ve been wanting to put us back in our place since high school, and they see this as the best chance they’ve had since the days when Scott Brown was a Cosmo centerfold.

The returns on private accounts would depend on volatile markets and would not have COLAs built in to safeguard against inflation, nor would they provide spousal and dependent benefits. And that uncompensated labor that already impacts women’s benefits in the current system? Privatization schemes would devastate any hope for economic security in retirement, because without the shared risk pool that Social Security represents, many women — especially those who took a time out of the work force to raise families and take care of aged or ailing family members — would quickly outlive their assets and be destitute.

We are not worthless, nor is our labor, and as I have said before, the older I get, the crankier I get about the fact that women are discounted, dismissed and disrespected with distressing frequency, and the sudden flurry of legislation that is aimed at putting all of us, regardless of age or fertility status, back in our place is methodical and intentional and something we have to stop now, before The Handmaid’s Tale comes to read like current events.

*****

This post is part of a series I am writing as a blogging fellow for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of more than 270 national and state organizations dedicated to preserving and strengthening Social Security.

The budget proposal put forth by Paul Ryan is a vicious and cruel all-out attack on everyone under the age of 55, but the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that the Ryan plan proposes would be felt acutely by women, who make up more than half of the beneficiaries of both programs, and women retire closer to the poverty line than men do. Women who are alone, who either never married or who are divorced or widowed and never remarried would be particularly vulnerable.

The attack on Medicare is one that rallies everyone. Not everyone over 55 is a psychopath who couldn’t care less so long as they get theirs. I honestly think that Paul Ryan was counting on people over 55, the largest republican voting bloc out there, not giving a damn so long as they got to keep theirs. I think he is so steeped in Randianism that he was taken aback by the pushback he got from people who actually care about their kids and their younger siblings and everyone else who paid in all their adult lives and stand to get rogered roundly if Ryan’s scheme sees the light of day.

The CBO, the non-partisan number-crunching office of Congress, estimates that the Ryan scheme would double the out-of-pocket healthcare expenses of seniors to $12,000 per year. That would leave grandma eating catfood in the homeless shelter. On average, female seniors have an annual income of only $14,000. Of that annual income, about $12,000 comes from Social Security. (Could you live on $2000 per year?)

Here is the bottom line: Ryan’s plan would amount to transfering the entire monthly Social Security benefit for female seniors to private health insurance companies.

I can’t possibly sum it up any more succinctly than Senator Barbara Boxer did when she said “This is a sick proposal,” during a press conference with other Senate Democrats last week.

As bad as that is, the assault on Medicaid is even worse. Women comprise about 70% of all Medicaid beneficiaries, the Medicaid program has been demonized and branded as welfare, as “free” healthcare for “those people.” The right-wing social conservatives have been very successful in projecting the face of Medicaid as an inner city “welfare mother” with several children, presumably with different fathers. That is the implication, anyway, when GOP politicians dismiss Medicaid as a progenitor of promiscuity. But in reality, most Medicaid recipients are elderly or profoundly disabled people in nursing homes, and the idea of making Medicaid a block grant that states could use to deliver healthcare as they saw fit would only make matters worse. States have already mucked up their end of the joint federal-state program,  and block grants would make matters far worse.

The CBO estimates that Republicans’ proposed plan to block-grant Medicaid would reduce federal program expenditures by 35 percent by 2022 and by 49 percent in 2030 relative to current law. In return, states would have greater flexibility to restructure Medicaid benefits.

How governors would actually use this flexibility is another matter. Medicaid is flexible right now. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that about 60 percent of state Medicaid spending consists of expenditures to cover people or to reimburse services that are not required under federal law.

Given Medicaid’s low per-person cost and its relatively restrained projected cost growth, there’s little room to comfortably cut. Safety-net services are already shoestring operations. Under-funded and stressed, they have many shortcomings. There is no way to meet the above spending reduction targets without shifting costs and risks onto the states, covering markedly fewer people and services, or further underpaying Medicaid providers.

No one can firmly say how states would respond to the reduced federal support. I fear that’s precisely the point. Block grants provide both states and the federal government with useful political cover to cut important benefits. If a particular state eliminates Medicaid home care services or by dropping the working poor from coverage, Congressional Republicans can say: “Don’t blame us. That’s what this state chose to do.” Meanwhile governors can say, with equal justification: “Don’t blame us. We’re doing the best we can, given limited federal resources.”

Do you wonder to whom the care of those elderly and disabled people would fall if Medicaid went away?

I can tell you who it would fall to — it would fall to women, mostly in their forties and fifties, women would have to leave the workplace to care for their elderly parents or disabled siblings or children, high-need individuals whose nursing home care would no longer be paid for.

This in turn would reduce the amount of Social Security benefits those women would receive upon retirement, to the point that these women would end up paying every single penny of their retirement benefits, for which women worked all their adult lives to private companies because Medicare is gone.

And so it goes.

Yes, there is a war on women, and it isn’t just being waged against those in their childbearing years.

They really are out to get us all. And no, I’m not paranoid. It’s only paranoia when the threat is imaginary, and this one is not; it is quite real.

You know the time-tested-and-proven addage — a gaffe is when a politician opens his mouth and what he or she really believes comes out. Sometimes it’s the revelation that the politician is barking mad and doesn’t have the foggiest notion what they are talking about.

We only have to look back a week for a perfect example of this phenomenon, when Mitch McConnell said this in an interview with Congressional Quarterly:

“Last week, the Social Security trustees issued a report saying Social Security and Medicare are not sustainable under their current structure.”

Back in the day, when we had a functioning press corps instead of a cocktail-weenie-wagging press corpse; back when we had real reporters doing actual journalism instead of the steno-pool full of faithful scribes who can be counted on to regurgitate right-wing talking points unchallenged, that sort of nonsense would have been a bit in the teeth of the reporter, who would have done his or her homework ahead of time, and McConnell would have been hammered mercilessly with the fact that the trustees said no such thing.

“Projected long-run program costs for both Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing.”

There is a world of difference between what McConnell said the trustees reported and what the McConnell said they reported.

McConnell’s implication is that there is a hair-on-fire emergency and Social Security has to be fundamentally changed because it’s doomed to bankruptcy otherwise; when in fact what the trustees presented was an either/or — either revenues will have to be raised, or benefits will have to be cut decades down the road.

The essential Dean Baker had the best analogy I have seen on McConnell’s misrepresentation:

This would be like driving from Chicago to Detroit and determining that at some point you will need more gas to complete the trip. That would mean stopping at a gas station and refilling your tank. By contrast, McConnell’s comment implies that the car is about to breakdown and will not make the trip.

Congressional Quarterly failed their readers when they didn’t follow up and press the Senator to clarify whether

A.) he didn’t understand what the trustees actually said or

B.) was being deliberately dishonest in pursuit of political gain.

There is no option C.

The reality is there is no Social Security crisis, no matter how loudly the greed-mongers and deficit scolds insist there is.

They can wail and gnash their teeth and rend the cloth from their breast all day long and into the night. That still won’t change the fact that Social Security is not only not responsible for our deficit woes, it is independent of the deficit and it is solvent for decades. Period. Full stop.

The trustees report that McConnell misrepresented actually presents the same findings as the CBO report in that last link. Both report that the Social Security trustfund, without changing a thing, will be able to make full payouts through 2030-something — it should also be noted that the full payout projections have been pushed downward not by flaws in the system, but by the economic downturn of the last couple of years. Both note that those numbers should start ticking back up as the economy recovers, and if that isn’t the case, we have a lot bigger problems than Social Security heading our way.

In reality, any projected shortfalls in future Social Security benefits could be easily remedied with either of a couple of easy fixes would not only fill that hole, it would put the program on a sound footing indefinitely. The first option would be to raise the cap. Currently, a person making more than $106,800 pays no Social Security tax on any monies earned over that amount. Removing the cap and taxing all monies equally would put the program on solid footing indefinitely. So would a very modest increase — 1% or less — in the amount of payroll tax withheld from the wages of those of us who earn less than $106,800.

I don’t know about you, but I would  be willing to give up three designer coffees a pay-period now to assure that Social Security will be there when I reach retirement age.

Elected leaders who embrace the “fundamental change is necessary” mantra are either stupid, or lying. In neither instance  should they be making decisions that affect millions of Americans. And that goes double for those who parrot the BS knowing full well it’s just that…BS.

I’m looking at you, CQ.

*****

This post is part of a series I am writing as a blogging fellow for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of more than 270 national and state organizations dedicated to preserving and strengthening Social Security.

Adam at the St. Louis Activist Hub points out that the stars are perfectly aligned for Democrats who can see their way clear to stand up for Social Security and Medicare. He thinks the implications for Claire McCaskill are also clear:

… if 77% of Missourians oppose cuts to Medicare, and Todd Akin helped craft a budget that tries to get rid of Medicare, it seems pretty clear to me which message Senator McCaskill should be pushing.

You’d think so too, right?

Well, keep that conviction in the back of your mind and read TPM’s report about how Steny Hooyer is signaling that the Democratic leadership is willing to oh-so-politely hand over their advantage on the Medicare issue:

At his weekly Capitol briefing with reporters Tuesday, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) confirmed what aides in both parties have been telling reporters: Cuts to Medicare will be on the table in deficit and debt limit negotiations, led by Vice President Joe Biden

TPM’s Brian Beutler continues:

… there are any number of ways to cut Medicare spending without “fixing” the Medicare debt problem — from means testing, to raising the retirement age, to reducing reimbursement rates, and so on. Not all of them constitute benefit cuts, but many of them do.

Remember McCaskill’s deficit demagoguery? The McCaskill-Corker spending cuts that she’s championed would necessitate massive cuts to both programs. She’s going to have a hard time attacking Todd Akin on his votes to cut Medicare while she’s waving that particular fiscally responsible flag. Also, I remember that earlier this spring, at a meeting of what is now the Missouri Progressive Action Group (MOPAG), McCaskill, while affirming that she was against cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits, indicated that she was quite willing to cut Social Security benefits indirectly by raising the retirement age.    

None of this bodes well for McCaskill or the Democratic party.  One can only hope that McCaskill, at least, will step back and reassess the political landscape in a realistic fashion. As Greg Sargent argues, the GOP is already on the offensive, trying to run the same campaign they did in 2010 when they falsely accused Democrats of voting to cut Medicare:

Republicans are already pursuing this strategy. In the special House election in New York’s 26th district, where the GOP candidate is in trouble over her support for Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicare as we know it, Republicans are fighting back by accusing the Democrat of wanting Medicare cuts because she said Medicare should be on the table.

Surely McCaskill isn’t befuddled enough to bring the ammunition to the GOP firing squad and docilely back up to the wall, is she?

Progressive Change Campaign Committee/Democracy for America/Credo Action/MoveOn commissioned a series of polls in Missouri, Ohio, Minnesota, and Montana. The Missouri poll interviews were from May 13-16 and included 1,050 Missouri voters. The margin of error is 3%:

PCCC/DFA/Credo/MoveOn poll — Budget issues in swing states

QUESTION: In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose cutting spending on Social Security, which is the retirement program for the elderly?

Missouri 17% support 76% oppose

QUESTION: In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose cutting spending on Medicare, which is the government health insurance program for the elderly?

Missouri 19% support 77% oppose

QUESTION: In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose cutting spending on Medicaid, which is the government health insurance program for the poor, disabled, and children?

Missouri 32% support 63% oppose

It’d be nice to get a look at the demographics.

What’s interesting is that the right has done such a great job of vilifying Medicaid that significantly more respondents are into cutting off the “poor, disabled, and children” from access to health care. So much for altruism.

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) at about the same PPP had their poll in the field:

Truman Days 2011: Senator Claire McCaskill (D) (May 15, 2011)

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): ….So how are we gonna get through the next decade and maintain our priorities and values? This will be a challenge. And I want to make sure no one leaves this room without me saying very clearly how serious the problem is. It is impossible to find a country in the world that has had economic growth when their debt equaled their GDP. When the debt in a country had equaled their gross domestic production countries don’t grow. Now, we are gonna be there in less than ten years. We will be there. So, if we don’t want to get there we all have to be honest and realistic about what has to happen. Does it have to be the way [Republican Congressman] Paul Ryan wants it to be? No, of course not. it does not have to be the way Paul Ryan. Do we have to end Medicare? No, we do not and we will not end Medicare, [applause, cheers] not on my watch. But we have a fight to in the future. And we have to have targeted investments in infrastructure, in innovation, and of course, in education. But we also have to realize that the footprint of the federal government is gonna have to shrink. And we do have to have a tax code that is less tilted towards the very, very, very, very wealthy in this country. [applause]….

If the poll is any indication the response to republicans shouldn’t just be no, it should be hell no. And that response shouldn’t just be for the benefit of the Democratic base, but to everyone.

If Democrats don’t incessantly club the republicans over the head with Medicare in 2012 they deserve to lose everything.  

Social Security and Medicare have become pillars of our society in the decades since they were introduced and fully implemented, and because of those two programs, America’s senior citizens are able to retain independence, dignity and quality of life and avoid falling into poverty in their later years, regardless of the amount of wealth they amassed during their working years. That doesn’t figure into the calculation — you paid in, and you get to receive the benefits of your investment every month for the rest of your life once you reach retirement age.

Every year, the board of trustees that oversees Social Security and Medicare releases a report on the financial health of the two programs. This year’s report, released last Friday, shows that in spite of the fact that Social Security outlays were more than receipts last year, the program is solvent for decades, with the combined Social Security Trust Funds holding sufficient assets to pay full benefits for the next 25 years with no changes to the system at all.

There was quite a lot of squawking and shrieking as those ideologically opposed to Social Security furiously tried to spin the fact that more was spent than taken in. The program was, depending on who was doing the shrieking, either in crisis, in dire straits, broke, bankrupt, insolvent, or doomed.

Except, of course, it is none of those things.

Social Security can not, by law, run a deficit. It can only make payments it has the funds in reserve to cover. The only option Social Security has is cutting benefits if it gets into fiscal difficulty. In plain English, this means that Social Security does not — can not, by law — contribute a single dime to the deficit, and that is why it should never be a part of any deficit reduction deal.

Last year’s report projected that if no adjustments to the system are made, Social Security would face a funding gap after 2037, when benefits would need to be reduced to 78% of current payments through 2084. Still, there is no need to panic. The fix to fill in the shortfall is simple: scrap the payroll tax cap and collect it on all income, not just the first $106,800 that an individual earns in a year, as is the case now. That simple tweak would assure full funding of Social Security for at least 75 years.

There is a legitimate need to have a conversation about the debt and deficit that we as taxpayers and citizens are going to have to deal with, but Social Security should not be a part of that conversation. The so-called liberal media mocked Al Gore when he said the words “lock box” but he was right. Social Security ought to be put over there, aside from everything else, because it is a separate, self-funding entity.

Every time they try to talk about Social Security in the same conversation as deficit reduction, call them on it, because that is a deliberate tactic that is utilized dishonestly by those who want to see the program ended and privatized. Conflating the dedicated revenue stream of Social Security with general fund expenditures fosters not one, but two, insidious myths. The first is that Social Security adds to the deficit, and the second is the perception that feckless government officials are already illegally raiding the trust funds and stealing the contributions that hard-working Americans have already paid in.

Instead, we should have the conversation about Social Security after the budget fight is settled and the debt ceiling is raised, and we should have that conversation in the cold, clear light of day.

*****

This post is part of a series I am writing as a blogging fellow for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of more than 270 national and state organizations dedicated to preserving and strengthening Social Security.

Ever since Social Security became the law over 75 years ago, there have been conservatives who wanted to kill it, finding the very notion that elderly or disabled people should retain any dignity or independence after their productive years have passed anathema. If you’re no longer “useful” in their particular definition of the word, then you’ve got a lot of damned gall even thinking you should be able to stay out of poverty.

What the hell right does Grandma have to a flu shot and a living allowance? There are a lot of ways that money could be better spent, so far as they are concerned. It could be used to pay down the debt, or it could be invested on Wall Street. All Grandma does is spend it on rent and groceries and the like. She just pisses it away, staying out of poverty, the parasite.

As best I can tell — I sometimes have trouble translating “bloodless goon” into ordinary, American English — that is at least part of Robert Samuelson’s position in his latest post at Real Clear Politics. That, and making sure that the deficit problem that Bush and the GOP Congress created gets solved by making the people who have realized no benefit from the Bush tax cuts and can least afford it pick up the tab:

Suppose we increased the federal gasoline tax by 25 cents a gallon, from 18.4 cents to 43.4 cents. That would raise $291 billion over the decade from 2012 to 2021, estimates the CBO. Or we could advance the ages for early and full Social Security benefits; one suggestion is to raise them (now 62 and 66) by two months a year until reaching predetermined targets (say, 64 and 70). The CBO reckons the decade’s savings at about $264 billion. How about slowly moving Medicare’s eligibility age from 65 to 67. The savings: $125 billion.

Are we finished? Nowhere near. At most, these crowd pleasers would make noticeable dents. Recall that the deficits total almost $10 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s original 2012 budget. That’s the point: even discounting the effects of the deep recession, prospective deficits are so large that they can’t be cured by tinkering. We should be asking basic questions:

— How big a government do we want? For four decades, federal spending has averaged 21 percent of gross domestic product. An aging population and high health costs mean that average spending, as a share of GDP, will rise by a third or more in the next 10 to 15 years if today’s programs simply continue.

— Who deserves government subsidies and how much? About 55 percent of spending goes to individuals, including the elderly, veterans, farmers, students, the disabled and the poor.

— How much, if at all, should social spending be allowed to squeeze national defense?

— If taxes rise, how much and on whom? What taxes would least hurt economic growth?

Perhaps Samuelson calls an increase in the gas tax a “crowd pleaser” because it would hit those at the bottom of the economic ladder the hardest, since simple economics dictates that the lower the rung one occupies the less likely they are to drive a newer, more fuel-efficient car — and cashiers and construction workers don’t have a telecommute option to exercise. But let’s not get distracted with the gas tax issue, because what he really wants to do is eviscerate the social safety net.

He is being disingenuous at best and deliberately dishonest at worst when he says “the deficits total almost $10 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s original 2012 budget. That’s the point: even discounting the effects of the deep recession, prospective deficits are so large that they can’t be cured by tinkering.” That same CBO that he touts in his very first ‘graph also says that if nothing is done, other than simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire and tax rates return to the Clinton-era levels, the deficit disappears.

Now let’s answer some of those questions that he says no one is asking.

When he asks how big we want our government to be, he is starting from a faulty premise. It isn’t the size of government that matters, it is the quality. When he asserts that our “aging population and high health costs mean that average spending, as a share of GDP, will rise by a third or more in the next 10 to 15 years if today’s programs simply continue.”

What he is surely smart enough to know, but is betting that his target audience isn’t, is that he just made the perfect argument for single-payer healthcare, most easily achieved by expanding Medicare to cover everyone and then allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of medications and assignment schedules. Healthcare is the problem, and we are decades behind the rest of the developed world in coming to that realizations and moving away from the ridiculous “market based solutions” that conservatives are so fond of.

Then he asks just who, exactly, deserves to be subsidized by the government and how much subsidy they deserve. I answer that question with “children and the elderly” and I believe that human beings deserve more investment than the “defense” budget that currently eats up more than half of every dollar the government spends, either killing or preparing to kill other human beings.

When he asserts that currently, 55 cents of every dollar the government spends “goes to individuals” he is deliberately and dishonestly fudging his numbers. He is including Social Security in that number, but Social Security is not part of the general fund. It is a separate, self-funding entity. Workers pay in a few dollars from every paycheck on the first $106,800, and at retirement start receiving a monthly benefit. As it currently stands, the Social Security trust fund is perfectly solvent for at least 25 more years — if we do nothing. It would be solvent in perpetuity if the earnings cap was raised and high-earners paid in on all of their income.

His next question, though, really cuts to the heart of what really drives every conservative – how much should social programs “be allowed” to “squeeze” the spending on the military? What drives conservatives is fear. They are different from you and me. They are fearful and scared and will pay any price to feel “safe” in a world that is constantly changing and evolving and moving on without them. It is a sad and specious strawman argument. The United States currently accounts for 42.8% of all of the military spending in the world, but we only have 5% of the world’s population. Compare that to China, the most populace country in the world, which accounts for a mere 7.3% of global military expenditures.

It’s simple math – the biggest piece of the pie is the place to start cutting off slivers. The military budget is the biggest piece of the pie – and after a certain point, the amount of money we spend doesn’t make us more safe, but instead does just the opposite.  

When he asks how much taxes should rise, and on whom, and which ones would least hurt economic growth, we know his answer. He gave it to us at the start: He has no problem at all with taxes that disproportionately hit those who can least afford it. Conservatives like to pretend that taxing the rich would keep them from creating jobs. Yet during the Bush years — and he pushed through two rounds of tax cuts in his first term – American jobs disappeared, not to be replaced, every single year, we didn’t gain them.

Raising taxe
s on those at the bottom, on the other hand, hampers economic growth. The less money one has, the faster they spend it when it comes in. They buy groceries and clothes and gasoline, and they pay rent and utilities. Those are dollars that circulate through the economy locally and add a little stimulus at every stop along the way.

Samuelson concludes with the familiar palaver about means testing and raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare – even though Social Security is not part of the general fund, and the cost of health care is the underlying problem that is causing our money woes.

If we actually did what he suggests and put off Medicare eligibility a couple more years, it would be a false economy. Imagine all the people who would be wiped out financially by medical bills between the ages of 65 and 67…assuring that many more seniors would pass his odious “means test” before accessing that which they paid into all their working lives.

*****

This post is part of a series I am writing as a blogging fellow for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of more than 270 national and state organizations dedicated to preserving and strengthening Social Security.

Digby:

…despite what many people insist isn’t true and what vast majorities of the public want, Social security is on the chopping block in this congress. The first salvo was the failed deficit commission. The next is coming up in the budget negotiations. We’ve got people on both sides of the aisle desperate to do this thing to “prove” they are able to harshly cut spending — 30 years from now — in some quixotic attempt to make the markets magically fix everything that’s wrong with the economy. It’s a form of mass delusion, but it has become a matter of conventional wisdom among our ruling elite…

StrenghtenSocialSecurity, a coalition of groups, is asking us to contact Congress and let them know we want them to defend the most successful and effective social program in the country.

Principles

1. Social Security has a surplus of $2.6 trillion, which it has loaned to the federal government. Social Security did not cause the federal deficit. Its benefits should not be cut to reduce the deficit.

2. Social Security, which has stood the test of time, should not be privatized in whole or in part.

3. Social Security is insurance and should not be means-tested. Because workers pay for it, they should receive it regardless of their income or savings.

4. Social Security is fully funded for more than 25 years; thereafter it has sufficient funds to meet 75 percent of promised benefits. To reassure Americans that Social Security will be there for them, Congress should act in the coming few years outside the context of deficit reduction to close this funding gap by requiring those who are most able to afford it to pay somewhat more.

5. Social Security’s retirement age, already scheduled to increase from 65 to 67, should not be raised further. That would be a benefit cut that places the greatest hardship on older Americans who are in physically demanding jobs, or are otherwise unable to find or keep employment.

6. Social Security, whose average benefit is $13,000 in 2010, provides vital protection against the loss of wages as the result of disability, death, or old age.  Those benefits should not be reduced, including by changes to the cost of living adjustment or the benefit formula.

7. Social Security’s benefits should be increased for those who are most disadvantaged.  The benefits, which are very important to virtually all workers and their families, are particularly crucial to those who are disadvantaged.  

Shout these principles from the roof tops and at Congress.

If you go to the Washington Post business section this morning, you will see what I mean. Lori Montgomery has turned in, and an editor has seen fit to publish, 700 or so words of ignorant, unresearched blather and nonsense under the headline Social Security splinters Democrats in debate over reining in budget deficits.

And the article lives down to the headline.  It is a jounalistic chimera of unsourced allegations and speculation, innuendo, conflated information and mindlessly regurgitated talking points asserted as fact.

With momentum building to rein in record budget deficits, Democrats are sharply divided over whether to tackle popular but increasingly expensive safety-net programs for the elderly, particularly Social Security.

Social Security does not contribute one penny to the deficit. It is a self-funded program and it is solvent until 2037 if we do nothing, indefinitely if we make a minor tweak and raise the earnings cap.

A growing number of Democratic lawmakers say they are willing to consider controversial measures such as raising the retirement age and reducing benefits for wealthier seniors as part of a compromise with Republicans to cut spending on the programs and stabilize them for future generations.

Really? Name them. Which Democrats are saying that they will consider these fundamental changes to the program that keeps millions of senior citizens out of poverty and enjoying a decent quality of life and living independently? Name them. If you can’t name them on the record, don’t make implications. That’s not a tool of the journalist, that’s a tool of the  propagandist.

It is flat-out lying to imply that Social Security is responsible for the deficit when it is self-funded and solvent for decades and can be made so for generations to come simply by raising the cap on the income that the Social Security tax is collected on.

Right now, every dollar you and I make, we pay Social Security taxes on. But people who make over $106,800 don’t pay anything on the money they make beyond that amount. It doesn’t matter if it’s a surgeon who works long hours and is underpaid at $300,000 or a Wall Street parasite stealing millions from people like that surgeon, they don’t pay Social Security taxes on the money they earn over $106,800. If that was changed, we would have indefinite solvency. Problem solved. Decades in advance.

But senior lawmakers such as Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) are lining up against them, arguing that tampering with Social Security would harm the elderly — as well as the political fortunes of Democrats hoping to maintain control of the White House and the Senate in 2012.

Nice! Way to go! That was a classic move there at the end, implying that Democrats only really care about their own political fortunes, not the quality of life of their elderly constituents. They just want to stay in office, and they’re sleazy enough to bribe grandma to do it. Too bad it’s been in use since at least 1983 and has grown stale and trite and only the lasiest and most inept of shills bothers with it anymore. Most decent hacks worth their salt would be ashamed to trot it out.

The dispute, long simmering behind the scenes, is poised to erupt into public view. Reid has scheduled a rally Monday on Capitol Hill to show “support for Social Security and opposition to cuts in benefits,” according to an e-mail sent to liberal activists. And House Democrats this week signaled their intention to use Social Security as a cudgel in next year’s elections by launching an ad campaign accusing 10 GOP lawmakers in swing districts of plotting to cut the program.

Long-simmering? Really? Hmmm. I have a friend or two on the hill and talk to a couple of congressional staffers for a couple of Missouri politicians who are right in the thick of every tussle, and if there was a “long-simmering” dispute that was about to blow up, I would know it. I haven’t heard anything, but just to be sure, I called one of those friends this morning and asked. He literally chuckled and said, in a Seinfeld-esque sort of way, “I don’t think so.” I laughed too and said “well, I figured if there was you would have told me,” to which he responded “definitely.”

I am most impressed, though, with the way she manages to make the fact that the Democrats are going to run ads that tell the truth about the republican positions on Social Security — sound like they’re playing dirty. Since when is it sleazy to point out to the voters that a sitting representative said of Social Security “I don’t like it“? The examples are repleat and using them isn’t in any way sleazy.

Meanwhile, Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank, plans to release a memo Friday arguing that the deficit has emerged as an uncommonly powerful political issue and that 2012 voters will reward the party that takes bold action to restrain government spending — including overhauling Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

“In our view, Republicans are winning this fight,” the memo says, according to an advance copy provided to The Washington Post. “They are winning by taking on an issue that voters believe is serious; they are winning on candor; and they are winning by being on the side of reform. Democrats – who ran on change – are quickly becoming the status quo party on the budget.”

In an interview, Third Way policy director and former Schumer aide Jim Kessler said, “There’s a conventional view right now that [entitlement spending] is an issue that shouldn’t be touched within the Democratic Party, that we should wait for Republicans to act and trap them.”

“… Our view is, that might work in a normal time. But this isn’t a normal time,” he said. “We think it’s more dangerous politically not to be in this debate than to be in it.”

Of course. I should have known from the tone that the spineless sellouts of Third Way — they are not Democrats, they are what we used to call Rockefeller Republicans — would pop up halfway through, and whadya know? Halfway through, they become the focus of the entire article.

Here’s a bit of free advice for Third Way and Ms. Montgomery…Sometimes everybody hates you not because you are doing something right, but because you are the very epitome of “wrong.” This is the case with Third Way. Even mentioning them is a conversation ender.

So is conflating Medicare and Medicaid with Social Security. So there’s two strikes. The only reason to keep reading now is to see just how deep she can manage to dig this spectacular hole she’s furiously toiling away at.

How Democrats resolve the dispute could affect not only the party’s political fortunes but also the future of talks aimed at developing a bipartisan strategy for stabilizing the national debt. With a critical vote looming later this year to raise the legal limit on government borrowing past $14.3 trillion, six senators from both parties are working to come up with a debt reduction plan that could win broad support — and Republicans consider Social Security a key part of the solution.

Did she not get the memo? The grand bargain sellout is dead. And as for the debt ceiling, well, that’s Boehner’s problem. He’s the one that needs to get the votes together. If the Democrats have any sense and political savvy, they will call the bluff of the republicans who are blustering about default if Social Security isn’t cut. The freshmen republicans are not as
“independent” as they have sold themselves to be. One half of the republicans in Congress (and at least a third of the Democrats) are a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street, and the other half of the republican caucus is the government affairs division of Koch Industries. No matter who is controlling the strings of the Republican Marionettes, they won’t be letting the country default on our debts. They will be brought to heel before we default.

Social Security is the single largest federal program, dispensing about $700 billion last year to nearly 60 million people, the vast majority of them retirees. Since the program’s creation in 1935, the cost of Social Security benefits has been entirely covered by payroll taxes paid by current workers. This year, however, payroll tax revenues are projected to fall $45 billion short of covering benefits, and the problem is projected to grow as the number of retirees balloons compared with the number of working adults.

Good grief, I get tired of singing this tune. Social Security is a separate, self-funded entity that has nothing to do with the deficit. There is no Social Security crisis. Over and over again, the CBO issues reports that find the Social Security trustfund, without changing a thing, will be able to make full payouts through 2039 — it should also be noted that the full payout projections have been pushed downward by the economic downturn of the last couple of years, and those numbers should start moving the other way as the economy recovers. And if that isn’t the case, we have a lot bigger problems than Social Security coming down the pike.

And even if the trust fund were to run out, Social Security would still be in pretty good shape. First of all, the trust fund is a relatively recent creation. It was establisned in 1983, three years before the baby boomers started turning forty, to deal with the demographic bulge headed Social Security’s way in 2011. The last boomers will retire in 2029, ten years before the trust fund is currently projected to be depleted. Essentially, when the trust fund runs dry, it will coincide with the fact that it’s mission will be, for the most part, complete. It will have eased the strain caused by the retirement of the baby boom.

The depletion of the Social Security trust fund is not a pending disaster, it’s by design. The fact of the matter is, in case you are one of the people in this country to whom facts matter, Social Security is a self funding entity, independent of the general fund. It funds itself entirely through payroll taxes, and so long as payroll taxes are collected, retirees will get their checks. The only way that changes is if Congress acts to stop collecting payroll taxes or to outright abolish the program.

Democrats have traditionally defended the program, but even some liberal lawmakers now say changes in the benefit structure are required. Last week, 32 Senate Democrats joined 32 Senate Republicans on a letter in support of a broad-based deficit reduction effort that includes changes to entitlement programs.

One of the letter’s authors, Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), acknowledged that polls show people are overwhelmingly opposed to cutting Social Security and Medicare when asked about the programs individually. But, he said, they also want a plan to control spending that requires “everybody to put something on the table. … I am absolutely convinced if we put a comprehensive plan in front of people, they would cheer from the rooftops.” (Bloggers aside: I wonder what context of the quote was erased by that elipses…don’t you?)

Reid spokesman Jon Summers dismissed that argument.

“Senator Reid doesn’t believe that the budget should be balanced on the backs of America’s seniors, plain and simple,” he said.

Good grief…ninety-ninth verse, same as the first…Social Security is a separate entity, independent of the general fund. Medicaid and Medicare are not.

Forget about Social Security. Put it over here in a lockbox, as Al Gore said, and Just. Forget. About. It.

Where the debt and the deficit are concerned, Social Security is off the table because it did nothing to make the crisis.

Tax cuts and George Bush driving the economy into the ditch are what made the crisis. Social Security has kept it from being worse by buffering seniors from the vagaries of the market and the larger economy.

I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of peace of mind knowing that my mother is not going to end  up living with me because she’s broke.

*****

This post is part of a series I am writing as a blogging fellow for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of more than 270 national and state organizations dedicated to preserving and strengthening Social Security.