Social Security and Medicare both enjoy overwhelming support from Americans. Both programs are under attack from the radical Republicans who now control the GOP. Usually it’s a stealth attack, under pretense of reforming and making the programs better. But, emboldened by Tea Party rhetoric perhaps, poor old Todd Akin (R-2) just can’t keep his anti-Social Security animus to himself. As Think Progress reports (see video there), Akin let it all out on CSPAN’s Washington Journal last Sunday:

Now, Social Security through the years, for many many people, has been a terrible investment. It’s really a tax, that’s all it is. Social Security is a tax. The government has taken the tax. There’s been more money coming in than going out. And we spend it. That’s not been responsible. I don’t like it. I didn’t design Social Security. It actually came from Bismarck, FDR put it in place.

A terrible investment? Think Progress answers:

It has dramatically reduced elderly poverty – nearly half of seniors today would be in poverty without it – and it is the nation’s most effective tool at alleviating poverty among people with disabilities. It does all this while spending less than a penny per dollar on administrative costs. And despite conservatives’ fear mongering, Social Security is not going bankrupt any time soon.

You’ve got to give it to Akin – he really, really wants to stand up and take credit for going after Social Security. Multi-millionaire Rep. Billy Long (R-7), on the other hand, after filling out a questionnaire saying that he wanted to “dismantle” Social Security, refused to take credit for the statement – I’m guessing that he wisely decided that wide dissemination of such views might hurt his election chances.

Senator Roy Blunt is another example of GOP two-facedness. After speaking out against Social Security and Medicare in the past, he had the chutzpah to claim during his campaign that the Democrats would cut Medicare benefits.  Of course, now that Republicans like Paul Ryan are proposing dismantling those programs under the banner of reform, he is discretely silent.

I can only wonder when the poor citizens of Missouri will finally figure out what these radical Republicans, abetted by the Tea Party dupes, stand for. Benefits, like Social Security and Medicare help all of us, not just the brown-skinned “welfare-queens” who live only in rightwing mythology. One thing is sure, if we want to live in a world of haves and have-nots, Akin, Blunt and Long have the road-map that will show us the way.

Last Saturday (March 5), Claire McCaskill spent an informal hour visiting with several members of the group Progressive Democrats–STL. My impressions of the meeting can be summarized by referencing a post in which, early in this blog’s history, I compared her to the little girl in the poem who, when she is good, is very good indeed, but when she is bad, is … , well, maybe “horrid” would be an overstatement.  It’s difficult to be too hard on somebody who seems so willing to put all her cards on the table.

McCaskill is an attractive politician who comes across as sincere in her efforts to please her constituents, balance their often conflicting demands in the best way possible, and remain true to at least a modicum of her own beliefs. She seems painfully aware of what a difficult challenge this formula poses for a Missouri Democrat, and has clearly pinned her hopes on the ever-swinging center – and she deserves respect for not equivocating about that fact, even in a roomful of hard-core progressives.

In response to concerns about Democratic messaging, McCaskill seemed to me to be right on the money when she noted that it must be shaped by the current Republican overreach. She noted that Roy Blunt’s winning margins in the counties he took in the last election were less than hers in 2006, and, in so many words, observed that while some independents who had previously voted for her were willing to buy the GOP message in 2010, it is unlikely that they realized then that they were voting for the wholesale attack on the middle class that the GOP is now orchestrating in both Washington and on the state level. In short, she seems to think that Democrats have a chance in Missouri in 2012.

So far, so good – McCaskill is not just very good when she’s good, she’s obviously also very smart about politics. The latest GOP-led orgy of corporate giveaways, financed by benefits looted from the tax-paying middle class, does seem to be alienating lots of regular, every-day, working people who are waking up to the fact that they, not some mythical welfare queens, are the ones under attack.

Subsequently, however, McCaskill’s very good persona shone a little less brightly. While she affirmed her intention to stand firm against cuts in Social Security benefits, as I observed in an earlier post, the question comes down to how one defines benefits – and, last Saturday at least, McCaskill made it clear that she will probably go along with efforts to up the eligibility age.

The Senator rationalized this position by noting that such changes would be pushed so far into the future that they would affect “babies not even born yet.” She contended that if such measures are not taken, the Social Security burden will become unmanageable in the future, partly, she suggested, because average life spans are increasing. These statements are, of course, disputable from several points of view, and it would have been interesting to hear how McCaskill responds to arguments against them, had time and the nature of the gathering permitted that type of back-and-forth.

     

The same constraints governed the discussion about her signature deficit cutting crusade, although it was evident that she is firm that fixing the deficit is a major here-and-now priority, rather than an admittedly real problem that might, nevertheless, more effectively be dealt with after we dig ourselves out our current economic hole – a position that many serious economists hold. To her credit, she did, if I remember correctly, concede that the deficit is not only a spending problem, but also a revenue problem.

Finally, I was interested to hear McCaskill’s response to a question about how we can counter the potentially ruinous effects of the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision. She believes that transparency legislation, specifically the Disclose Act,  would have effectively curtailed the damage. She claimed that corporations would be shy about being identified with attacks of the sort that we saw during the last election. Here, as is often the case, the proof is in the pudding, and, as McCaskill noted, given the way the congressional votes stack up, it doesn’t look like we’re going to get to sample any of that Disclose Act pudding. We will not be able to learn, at least in the short term, if transparency is sufficient to discourage dishonest partisan political “speech” on the part of corporations.

One of the goals of the meeting, I believe, was to try to communicate to Senator McCaskill the depth of progressive longing for elected Democrats who are unafraid take a strong, values-based stance – and how that longing, if thwarted, might end up turning on her. It was clear that she understands that she runs that risk; but it was also clear that she thinks that, as far as progressives go, she can count on the fear and loathing excited by the extreme GOP candidates (think Ed Martin and Sarah Steelman) who have so far entered the race.

The meeting did succeed in suggesting ways that groups like the Progressive Democrats-STL can work with the Democratic party to counter GOP inroads in Missouri, thanks to the fact that McCaskill was willing to share her considerable knowledge of practical Missouri politics with the group. One of the other attendees remarked that the progressive task is not to move McCaskill more toward more progressive positions, but to do what is necessary to move Missourians in that direction.  True that – although it doesn’t mean that we should ever let McCaskill off the hook. Leaders, after all, are supposed to lead.

Via TPM, in a fund-raising letter Senator Claire “Deficit Scourge” McCaskill pledges not to cut Social Security benefits:

I don’t think anyone is going to propose cutting Social Security benefits — if they do, I’ll vote against those cuts,” she writes.

Of course, the proof is always in the pudding and what people mean by “cuts” varies. Lots of politicians, for instance, don’t seem to realize that raising the age for social security eligibility is in effect a benefit cut.  Nevertheless, this is heartening, and I agree with TPM’s Brian Buetler that, given McCaskill’s weak position, “this suggests the poltiifcs [sic] of Social Security is still on the side of those who don’t want to see benefit cuts.”

McCaskill also deserves kudos for targeting her deficit cutting zeal toward some areas that really are wasteful and unnecessary. In that regard, she sets herself apart from our House GOP delegation which unanimously voted this week to preserve huge taxpayer subsidies for the oil industry. She says very succinctly:

One of the first items on the chopping block should be subsidies for big oil corporations which are among the richest and most profitable companies in the world.

To which I say … Amen lady!

Read the entire letter here. Lots of good-sounding stuff, but I’ve been misled by McCaskill in the past when she’s wanted money, so I’m still waiting to see what she delivers.

It’s bad enough that mainstream media repeat answers from the right and the left in he said/she said fashion as if all responses were equally credible. But when the Post-Dispatch publishes a front page McClatchy article that repeats a Republican lie as if it were incontrovertible fact, I grind my teeth. So I wrote them:

I don’t know which is more culpable: a newspaper founded by Joseph Pulitzer for printing an article which falsely claims that Social Security is “driving the national debt skyward” or McClatchy newspapers, which circulates throughout the entire nation, for saying so. That claim, made in “Blueprint targets deficit, spending” (Feb. 14) is ridiculous on its face. First, Social Security takes no government funds. None. So how could it drive the debt up? It’s totally funded by its participants, which makes it an insurance program. How dare McClatchy and the Post  besmirch the reputation of the most beloved and important social program this nation has ever seen! Republicans have been spreading this calumny, and the Post should be ashamed for printing it.

Furthermore, Social Security is so fundamentally strong that it is fully funded at least through 2039, and any problems that might arise at that point could be easily fixed simply by raising the cap on Social Security taxes. Meantime, it is so healthy that its extra funds must be invested; therefore, Social Security has been buying T-Bonds. The truth, then, is that our government has been relying on Social Security to buys its bonds. It has not been propping up a program that contributes to the deficit. So Social Security has been supporting the government, all the while maintaining its own fiscal integrity.

If you got yourself into hock and borrowed a thousand bucks from a friend, would you blame your friend for your debt?

The editorial staff at the P-D is sharp. I get valuable information and well substantiated opinion from them regularly. But you know what I want to see the op-ed staff do? Write an editorial taking the paper’s own front page coverage to task when it offers lies to the reading public.

After last November’s debacle, Democracy for Missouri distilled the reason for the losses–basically, that the people Democrats worked so hard to get elected keep tacking toward the center instead of representing Democratic core values. The writer denies that the loss is a mandate for Republican ideas–as if the American people want a return of the same policies that put us in the worst economic downturn in seventy years. Rather, voters are frustrated that the war on the middle class continues to go so well. The only way they could express that frustration was to punish the people who had the power and didn’t use it well enough on their behalf.

Perhaps the vote would have been less disastrous if so many progressive activists hadn’t sat this one out.

In 2006 and 2008, Howard Dean led a resurgent progressive movement to take back the congress and the presidency. These grassroots activists canvassed, phoned, and organized for their favorite candidate. Unfortunately once these Democrats were elected, they abandoned their base by running to the center. When these same people who put [in] their time and money wanted their agenda pushed forward and had the nerve to speak out, they were met with words like f$%^ing retard and accused of being the “professional left” by Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and press secretary Robert Gibbs.

If Democratic office holders keep running away from their base to try to appear Republican, they will continue to lose. Robin Carnahan lost many [progressives] when she decided to continue the “Bush” tax cuts despite big deficits and [cuts] in services. They personally told me that they would not work on her campaign and they have had it with Democrats that try to appear conservative

while universal health care access still [eludes] our [citizens], war is still being waged, and big money rules the political system.

The writer particularly warns Nixon, McCaskill, and Koster to heed that advice.

Nixon has not. Instead of so much as whispering the words “more taxes for the wealthy”–perhaps never even letting those words cross his mind–the governor keeps cutting necessities to the most vulnerable. The Communications Workers of America were so outraged, after the State of the State address, that they issued a press release:

Among the wrongheaded recommendations he announced were plans to lay off nearly 500 direct service employees in Department of Social Services and Department of Health and Senior Services. In addition to adding hundreds to Missouri’s already historically high numbers of unemployed, these cuts will:

• make accessing and applying for Medicaid, Foodstamps, child support and child care services vastly more difficult for thousands of financially struggling Missouri families
• reduce the number of state employees assigned to protecting children, senior citizens and people with disabilities from abuse and neglect
• force families with troubled youth to travel hundreds of miles to access state mandated treatment services.

Thursday’s Post-Dispatch headline–“McCaskill joins Senate GOP in deficit-reduction bill”–tells us that Claire is still courting people who will never vote for her.

Calling the move risky, Sen. Claire McCaskill introduced on Tuesday anti-deficit legislation that could impose automatic cuts in Social Security and other entitlement programs.

She is not, as she’d like to present herself, brave and fiscally responsible. She’s misguided. Repeat after me, Claire: Social Security did not cause these deficits. In fact, the government has been subsidizing its debt by selling T bonds to the solvent Social Security Trust Fund. Thank god that Social Security, as least, has been so well managed. So what purpose could possibly be served by cutting funds to seniors down the road? That would only take more money out of circulation. And when the economy suffers, so do tax collections, thus increasing the deficit.

Goddammit, Claire, learn to think like a Democrat!

Finally, we have Republican turned … sort of … Democrat, Chris Koster. Not even McCaskill would join a lawsuit challenging health care reform, which is what Koster is contemplating. He has this odd notion that “nonpartisan” means letting himself get bullied by Republicans into doing the most partisan thing possible.

You’re a Democrat now, Mr. Koster. Live up to it.

But you know what? I can lecture those three till the cows come home and they’ll continue tacking toward the center. They’re made that way. It’s easy for them to shrug off cyberspace scolding. Instead of figuring out that they’re alienating their base, they assume they didn’t wander far enough to the right. We progressives have got to find a way to get their mulish attention. We need to get our heads together and figure out how to organize so that we have more clout. Our efforts, heartfelt as they are, are scattershot. We need to find a way to turn them into lasers.

One way to do that, if you’re in the St. Louis Metro area, is to contact Rea Kleeman, who founded a group called Progressive Democrats–STL, devoted to revitalizing the state party. (Her contact info is beckkleeman@charter.net, 314-727-7374.) That group is maintaining contact with Susan Montee and hoping to help her with organizing and effective messaging. The larger that group becomes, the more help they’ll be able to offer. And the more she’s likely to listen.

I wish I could say that joining PD-S was just the first of several options, but for now, that’s the only one I can suggest. Some St. Louis progressives are looking into others, though. I hope to have more ideas to report in the near future. If any of you in other parts of the state have been having more success, I hope you’ll give the rest of us some tips. I hear Springfield and Kansas City are doing better at organizing themselves than we are.

Paul Krugman says that our political divisions won’t be easily resolved because they’re based on two different moralities:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state – a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net – morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

Kate Lovelady, the leader of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, spoke about that same division in regards to Social Security. At a December workshop sponsored by the Alliance for Retired Americans, she calmly laid out her arguments, with a measure of empathy we’d do well to match … those of us who have the patience.

I hope you’ll enjoy (or else excuse) what I’ve added to reinforce Lovelady’s ideas.

Both Krugman and Lovelady stress what we Lefties need to emphasize in every conversation we have with independents and right wingers as well: the moral imperatives that underlie our political opinions. A society that pulls together so that the largest possible number reap the benefits is morally superior to, as well as more economically stable than, one that adheres to the idea that everybody is out for himself and may the Devil take the hindmost.

Lovelady said it well:

Although it can be tempting to be angry with people who want to privatize or to do away with Social Security, it might be more helpful to have pity on them. Most of them are deluded by a fantasy that they can gamble and win big.

……..

So we need to care enough to save the privatizers from themselves, as well as to make sure that they don’t hurt the rest of us.

She speaks in the spirit of those prophets of social unity, Gandhi and King.  

On January 25, President Obama will address a joint session of Congress, and the nation, to deliver the State of the Union address and there is a lot of apprehension among those of us on the left. Will the President commit political suicide by grabbing hold of that so-called “third rail” of American politics, and embrace cuts to Social Security? Or will he keep his campaign promise to preserve and protect the most successful and popular social program in the history of the nation? During the campaign, he promised to fight against cuts to benefits, cuts to Cost of Living Adjustments and efforts to raise the retirement age. He also vowed to strengthen the program by raising the cap and paying Social Security taxes on those earning over $250,000 per year (currently, Social Security taxes are paid only on the first $107,000 of earnings.) He reiterated those promises in his weekly address on August 15, in which he commemorated the signing of the legislation into law by FDR 75 years before:

“I’d have thought that debate would’ve been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we’ve just experienced. I’d have thought, after being reminded how quickly the stock market can tumble, after seeing the wealth people worked a lifetime to earn wiped out in a matter of days, that no one would want to place bets with Social Security on Wall Street; that everyone would understand why we need to be prudent about investing the retirement money of tens of millions of Americans.

“But some Republican leaders in Congress don’t seem to have learned any lessons from the past few years. They’re pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall. It’s right up there on their to-do list with repealing some of the Medicare benefits and reforms that are adding at least a dozen years to the fiscal health of Medicare — the single longest extension in history.

“That agenda is wrong for seniors, it’s wrong for America, and I won’t let it happen. Not while I’m President. I’ll fight with everything I’ve got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street.”

Yet a month later when I questioned David Plouffe about the President’s committment to Social Security at the Harkin Steak Fry, I got a non-answer that made chills run up my spine…”They want to weaken and destroy it. We want to fix it.”

Try that answer on someone who doesn’t know that it doesn’t need fixing because it ain’t broke, and who went to school back when they taught us how to diagram sentences so we can decypher what those who look at the trust fund with a lustful, impure eye are really saying: “In order to avoid future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits. Ditto raising the retirement age.”

Didn’t we put some people in military prison for destroying villages in order to save them?

The fact of the matter is, 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.

That CBO report finds that 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.

Faced with that reality, those who oppose Social Security tend to go into “yeah, but…” mode and clutch at their pearls while they try in vain not to hyperventilate over a projected $4.5 trillion-with-a-t hole in Social Securities budget seventy five years down the road.

But this, too, is a faulty argument because a very modest increase — 1% or less — in the amount of payroll tax withheld from workers wages would not only fill that hole, it would put the program on a sound footing “indefinitely.”

They really stick their fingers in their ears and sing “la la la la la! I can’t hear you!” when it is pointed out to them that $4.5 trillion is about the same cost, over the same period of time, of permanently extending the Bush tax cuts to the top 2% of earners.

But that isn’t the end of their subterfuge! Their next ploy is to pretend that Medicare and Social Security are the same thing. They aren’t. They are totally separate entities and they are funded via different mechanisms. Medicare does have problems, but they trace to runaway costs in our broken healthcare system, not to Social Security. Pretending the two are one and the same is either fundamental ignorance or deliberate, willful dishonesty. There is no other option.

Elected leaders embracing cuts to Social Security by either reducing the amount of benefit paid or raising the retirement age are, therefore, 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’ll bet lots of you recognize the acronym HCAN, and I’d further bet that most of you had never heard of it two years ago. Here’s another acronym you are going to get familiar with: ARA–because the Alliance for Retired Americans will be in the forefront of the upcoming battle to defend Social Security.

My blood pressure is already spiking–not a good thing at my age–because of the campaign by the right and by Blue Dogs to cripple the most successful social program this country has even seen.

“But … but…,” the wingers protest, with their palms spread to show their sincerity. “We hate to be forced to encroach on this beloved program. The times require it, though. The economic ship of state is foundering, and we must all sacrifice to save the country. Social Security is nearly insolvent; in this economy, seniors can’t expect the rest of us to carry them.”

Clamp your hand over your back pocket and listen to me: They’re lying.

For starters, Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit our government faces. Zero. Nada. Goose egg. Diddly squat. The opposite is true. Social Security built up such a surplus in preparation for the retirement of the Baby Boomers that its trust fund has been buying Treasury Bonds–in effect, lending money to the federal government for operating expenses. But Treasury Bonds are a better way to invest that surplus than sticking it under a mattress. They’re safe unless the entire government goes under.

And yet the Commission has the gall to include Social Security in talks about the deficit, thereby implying that this program has somehow contributed to our economic woes. Even including the program in those talks is a case of guilt by association, and it’s a damned calumny! Social Security bailed the government out by buying Treasury Bonds and now it’s taking the blame for our debt? I need a paper bag to breathe into.

It is true that thirty years down the line, if nothing is done, Social Security will be unable to pay retirees 100% of their benefits. There’s a simple, just, way to prevent that day from arriving, though: change or remove the cap on taxable income. Right now, everybody pays 6.2 percent of his income in FICA taxes, but only up to the first $106,000 a person earns. Do you earn more than $106,000. If not, you’re paying FICA on everything you earn. Most of us do. What I want to know is howcome the people who can best afford to pay 6.2 percent on everything they earn, those bringing in, say, 250 thou a year–or more–are the ones who pay FICA on only part of their earnings? Why do they get off easy while the people who pave their driveways, teach their children, ring up their purchase at Macy’s, and protect them from burglars pay it on every penny in their paychecks?

Raise the cap or, better yet, remove it. We could require the wealthier earners to pay, maybe, 3% FICA on everything from $106,000 to $306,000. Or 1% on everything from $106,000 to $450,000. There are a hundred different ways to get those better off to contribute more to the trust fund.

If we had the political will.

Well, there’s the rub. Dick Durbin, a member of the Commission, voted for the the co-chairs’ recommendations. What? I thought he was a good Democrat. And Barack Obama has embraced all the recommendations of the co-chairs of the Deficit Commission. That’s ALL of them, including:

• raising the Social Security retirement age to 69 and the early retirement age to 64
• reducing Social Security benefits for middle income workers, so that, for example, if someone applied for benefits at age 62, he would receive only about $583 instead of the $1,167 currently allowed
• reducing Social Security cost of living adjustments

Hold on. We’re in the middle of the Great Recession. It’s not uncommon for someone to look for work for two years, and we’re contemplating keeping older workers hanging onto their jobs for an extra two years? Right. When Social Security was first enacted, part of the rationale for it was that “superannuation” would help the economy. In other words, older workers could retire–but with enough money to help keep the economic engine pumping–thus making room for younger people in the workforce.

Similarly, the Commission co-chairs–and Durbin and Obama–want to give middle income elderly people half to two/thirds as much money to live on AND SPEND as we have been giving them. Now there’s a half cocked idea for keeping the economy on the move. Those proposing these draconian cuts should know that, according to the ARA, “For one third of seniors, Social Security provides nearly all of their income.” These are people with no 401(k)s to fall back on. You slash that money out of their budgets and you are simultaneously slicing it right out of our economy.

The Alliance for Retired Americans is part of a progressive coalition that will be fighting this nonsense. ARA, three million strong nationwide and 60,000 strong in Missouri, aims to educate its members (you can join for a mere $10) and any seniors it can reach out to. Since seniors vote more than younger people, it’s important to get the correct information to them. In states like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois, where ARA has grown the most, it has been credited with swinging some elections. Judith Parker, a St. Louis activist, is busting butt to see that Missouri joins the ranks of the states where seniors know the score and vote accordingly.

Parker will tell you that Social Security is enormously popular, as we saw when Bush tried to privatize it in 2005. We’re counting on that popularity. It ought to slow down the rush to slice into the program. I mean, put yourself in John Boehner’s shoes. Does he really want to hang an albatross around the 2012 Republican presidential candidate? Because bringing legislation to the House floor that would, for example, raise the retirement age to 69 wouldn’t do the GOP ticket any good when the campaign starts revving up a year from now. Not that I’m saying we who want to protect Social Security can take it easy. Here’s a reason we can’t: Congressman Paul Ryan–yes, he of the Ryan Plan–will head the Budget Committee in the House come January. He may be unable to resist introducing bills that chip away at Social Security.

The left is organizing to resist the proposed cuts, and we stand a good chance of preserving this life saving program intact for future generations. After all, it’s an assault that will be mighty unpopular with voters. Seniors don’t deserve to be mugged like this, and they’ll scream bloody murder. Hell, it’s not just an assault on seniors. One in SIX Americans get Social Security, and those who don’t will need it someday. Besides the moral argument that we should not slash the income of the workers who built this economy and who contributed money to the trust fund in good faith, we can also argue that this assault will harm the country’s deficit spending problem rather than help by carving a huge chunk of spending power out of the population.

Too bad it looks like we’ll be fighting this battle without the help of the nominal head of our party or the likes of Dick Durbin.

photo of Ida Mae Fuller receiving the first Social Security check is courtesy of Illinois Social Security blog

Previously: Resist the catfood commission (November 29, 2010)

Miss Congeniality (2000)

…Stan Fields: What is the one most important thing our society needs?

Gracie Hart: That would be… harsher punishment for parole violators, Stan. [crowd is silent]

Gracie Hart: And world peace! [crowd cheers ecstatically]

Stan Fields: Isn’t she lovely? Thank you, Gracie Lou.

Gracie Hart: And thank you, Stan….

[emphasis in original]

Win!:

Fiscal Commission Final Report

By: Jane Hamsher Wednesday December 1, 2010 4:55 am

FDL has obtained a copy of the Catfood Commission final report in advance of its official 9:30 release….

….Their reigning spirit of self-importance comes through on the very first page: “The Moment of Truth.”

Here’s a gem. From the “goals” section:

Reform social security for its own sake, not deficit reduction.

Maybe they’d like to offer up their opinion on how to achieve world peace too? That’s not in their charter either.

And world peace!

The Deficit Commission is supposed to report its recommendations on Wednesday, December 1st. Tuesday is National Call-in Day to let targeted members of Congress know what we think of the catfood commission. We’ve got to start banging the drums now to fight what the co-chairs, Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat (in name only) Erskine Bowles, hope they can get the commission to propose:

• Raise the retirement age to 69
• Cut benefits up to 35%for middle-income workers
• Cut Social Security’s COLA, which does not pay enough as it is

Please make two quick calls. One minute apiece ought to do it. Just tell Senator Dick Durbin (1-202-224-2152), who is on the commission, to oppose meddling with Social Security. Tell Senator Claire McCaskill (1-202-224-6154) that if and when the issue of cuts to Social Security comes before the Senate, she must consider the program sacrosanct.

After all, Social Security is not the reason we have a deficit.

Social Security has not contributed one dime to our nation’s deficit. The Social Security Trust Fund was built up in preparation for the baby boomers’ retirement. In fact, the annual surpluses in Social Security have been used for years to help balance the federal budget.

Today Social Security is owed $2.6 trillion previously loaned to the federal government to cover the cost of other programs. But budget hawks are arguing that there is not enough money to pay back this loan to Social Security, so their answer is to cut Social Security benefits instead.

Working Americans of all ages have contributed money to Social Security and that money belongs to them, not the government. That money is dedicated to paying promised benefits. Social Security should not be used as a piggy bank to pay for bad fiscal decisions of the past.

What I’d like to know is why the commission has apparently not even considered the eminently practical solutions of making the wealthy pay social security taxes on their whole income (not just the first $106,800 per individual) and halting all borrowing from the trust fund.

Admittedly, we stand a good chance that the commission will fizzle with no recommendation at all on Social Security. It is composed of ten Democrats, including some Blue Dogs, and eight Republicans; for it to make any recommendation, it must get fourteen members to agree. That’s a very high bar. But it makes me simmer that we may have to fight the 2005 battle again, this time with Democrats in charge.