Lately ThinkProgress has been doing yeoman’s work in rooting through the various statements and the voting records of our congress members to find out just what their past record indicates about what they would do to important programs like Social Security. Among the 104 current congress members who are on the record for privatizing Social Security are – fanfare here – Roy Blunt (R-07) and Todd Akin (R-02).

The reason that it is worth remarking on this finding is because Missouri’s GOP candidates are so shy about discussing where they stand when Social Security comes up. They usually offer a rote (and often ambiguously worded) denial that they have any plans at all and then quickly turn the topic elsewhere. ThinkProgress lays out a familiar pattern of obfuscation:

… the GOP’s strategy on Social Security has been two-fold. First, Republicans deny they are interested in privatization. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) recently told the Wall Street Journal that “no one has a proposal up to cut Social Security,” (his own book proposes doing so), while conservatives in the media have tried to argue that Republicans don’t actually want to privatize Social Security.

The second tactic has been to obfuscate their privatization plans by sugarcoating them in flowery, palatable language. President Bush’s privatization plan is a prime example. In his 2005 State of the Union, President Bush said we needed to “save” Social Security and give younger workers a “better deal” by having “voluntary personal retirement accounts,” the poll-tested language for privatization.

So don’t be fooled. If you are ready to see Social Security go bye-bye, vote for Roy Blunt or Todd Akin this year (although I am willing to bet that if push comes to shove, the rest of our GOPers wouldn’t mind taking up a shovel to help bury one of our most successful government programs). Keep in mind that if the Republicans take over the Congress this election,  as ThinkProgress observes, “it’s likely that a GOP-controlled Congress would have the necessary votes to revisit the issue.”  

A few weeks ago Hotflash wrote abut the President’s Deficit Commission (formal title: National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform; informal title: Cat Food Commission) which is stacked with Republicans out to gut Social Security and Blue Dog Democrats who’ll be only too happy to lie down and roll over when the GOP whistles. If you read her posting, which paints a dire picture of what to expect from this Commission, you’ll be happy to learn that at least some House Democrats are already drawing the battle lines against the Commission’s recommendations – among them Missouri’s Lacy Clay (D-1st).

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-NM) sent a letter to President Obama making it clear that he and the 136 co-signers from the House of Representatives consider Social Security out-of-bounds:

You have charged the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with proposing recommendations that improve the long-term fiscal outlook and address the growth of entitlement spending. It is our view that Social Security – which is prohibited by law from adding to the national budget deficit – does not belong as part of those recommendations.

By 2023, Social Security will have built up a $4.3 trillion surplus, and, without any action, can pay full benefits until 2037 and at least 75 percent of all benefits thereafter. Because Social Security is funded separately from the general treasury and has no borrowing authority, it has not contributed to the federal deficit. Despite these facts, some Commission members have repeatedly alleged the need to cut Social Security for budgetary reasons.

[…]

Cutting Social Security benefits beyond the already scheduled increase in the retirement age from 65 to 67 would create even more needless hardship for millions of vulnerable Americans. This is especially true in the face of an economic downturn that has wiped out trillions of dollars that Americans were relying on for their retirement security and the increased dismantlement of the private and public pension systems.

If any of the commission’s recommendations cut or diminish Social Security in any way, we will stand firmly against them. We urge you to join us in protecting and strengthening Social Security rather than letting it fall victim to a misguided to reduce budget deficits on the backs of working families.

I hope that the people in Rep. Clay’s district thank him for his courageous defense of our Social Security. I also hope some of our other Missouri House Democrats hear from their constituents – I’d certainly like to know why they haven’t signed on as well.

Guilt trips have been getting a bad rap since the sixties. What’s wrong with a good guilt trip? For instance, have you called Senator Dick Durbin (202-224-2152) to urge him not to vote in favor of messing with Social Security? After the election, the Deficit Commission (aka the National Commission  of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) is planning to recommend that Congress cut benefits and raise the retirement age. We need one more nay vote to stop that recommendation, and Dick Durbin needs to hear from us that he ought to vote against it.

Look, Social Security didn’t cause the financial morass we find ourselves in. The credit for that goes to two misbegotten wars, the Bush tax cuts, and poor financial regulation. So Social Security has been looted to bail out the government for those godawful decisions, and now we the citizens, in addition to being robbed, are about to be further punished?

Make the call.

More scare tactic campaign mail from an astroturf right wingnut corporatist organization.

Previously: 60 Plus Association – rightwing campaign mail: fear as a tool

This stuff is slick and expensive:

The address side of the mail piece.

Note the scare tactic “IRS Notice.” And then this:

This IRS Notice is NOT real.

That defeats the whole purpose of the mailing, doesn’t it? If it’s not real than you shouldn’t be afraid of it.

The “B” side is just as pathetic:

The back side of the mail piece.

Ah, it’s directed at Representative Ike Skelton (D).

…Social Security….will be bankrupt…

Wrong. They have that much contempt for people in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District – they think voters are stoopid.

Here’s the rich part – this astroturf group isn’t concerned about preserving Social Security. In fact, they have been advocates for privatization.

And as for their scare tactics about Social Security, here are the facts:

Social Security Sense and Nonsense

…Social Security is a well-run, fiscally responsible program.  People earn retirement, survivors, and disability benefits by making payroll tax contributions during their working years…

….Every year since 1984, Social Security has collected more in payroll taxes and other income than it pays in benefits and other expenses.  (The authors of the 1983 Social Security reform law did this on purpose in order to help pre-fund some of the costs of the baby boomers’ retirement.)  These surpluses are invested in U.S. Treasury securities that are every bit as sound as the U.S. government securities held by investors around the globe; investors regard these securities as among the world’s very safest investments.

Investing the trust funds in Treasury securities is perfectly appropriate.  The federal government borrows funds from Social Security to help finance its ongoing operations in the same way that consumers and businesses borrow money deposited in a bank to finance their spending.  In neither case does this represent a “raid” on the funds.  The bank depositor will get his or her money back when needed, and so will the Social Security trust funds.

As far back as 1938, independent advisors to Social Security firmly endorsed the investment of Social Security surpluses in Treasury securities, saying that it does “not involve any misuse of these moneys or endanger the safety of these funds….”

This is the consequence of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (No. 08-205) – astroturf right wingnut corporatist organizations can spend unlimited amounts of money to pervert our elections, and because obstructionists in the republican minority carry water for them, these organizations don’t have to divulge who is bankrolling them.

The Deficit Commission (formally known as the National Commission  of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) has been packed with Social Security looters. The eighteen member commission–ten Democrats and eight Republicans–plans to report its recommendations to Congress after the midterm elections, but it can only issue recommendations if fourteen of the members agree on what those should be. Get fourteen out of eighteen members to agree on cuts? This oughta be a cinch to stymie. But not if enough of the Democrats fall into the Max Baucus/Kent Conrad Blue Dog category–and yes, thanks to Harry Reid, they’re both on the commission.

The co-chairs are Alan Simpson, retired Republican senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, who served as Clinton’s Chief of Staff. Both are gunning to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Both were appointed by President Obama. Granted that two of Obama’s six appointees had to be Republicans, still he didn’t have to pick a Republican co-chair like Simpson, who has been pushing for back-door benefit cuts to Social Security since the nineties.  You’ve likely already heard Simpson’s comment that Social Security is a “milk cow with 310 million tits.” NOW, trying to get Simpson booted off the commission, sent him 1500 baby bottle nipples with the message “tits for an ass.”

Bowles is much lower profile, but no less dangerous.

Described by Business Week in 1998 as “Corporate America’s Friend in the White House,” Bowles is president of the University of North Carolina and a venture capitalist with close ties to Wall Street. He sits on the board of Morgan Stanley and General Motors ….

He and his wife, Crandall, are members of the Business Council, a prestigious association of major CEOs. And when he was Clinton’s Chief of Staff, he “helped negotiate a secret pact  with Newt Gingrich in late 1997 to unite behind the commission’s proposals to raise the Social Security retirement age and begin privatization.”

Bowles is Obama’s pick for Democratic co-chair? “Corporate America’s friend” is our Democratic president’s choice? Provide your own expletive for that one.

It’s 2005 redux, and thanks to the “Democrats” in power, citizens will have to fight this Social Security brawl with bare knuckles. Judith Parker, a St. Louis progressive activist, has both fists cocked. She works for the Missouri Alliance for Retired Americans, one of the member groups of a coalition opposing what the Deficit Commission hopes to ram through Congress.  She tells me that to stop the Commission from issuing recommendations to gut these crucial programs, her coalition needs to change one Commission member’s mind. (As I said, the Commission can only make recommendations if 14 of its 18 members agree. Right now, only four members oppose cuts to the social safety net. Five nay votes are necessary.)

Those nay votes would preserve benefits for Missourians who receive Social Security:  nearly one out of every five of us. That’s more than a million people in this state alone.

Penalizing those 1,100,000 Missourians and the other Missourians who will someday need those benefits is unjust:

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.

Cutting Social Security benefits would be akin to telling a buddy who loaned you his last thousand bucks that you not only aren’t going to pay it back, but that it’s his fault you blew it at the casino.  

Furthermore, consider that:

Social Security lifts out of poverty 314,000 Missouri residents aged 65 and older. Without Social Security, the elderly poverty rate would increase from 1 out of 15 (6.8 percent) to nearly half (47.5 percent) of all residents.

So the Deficit Commission says, ‘How’s about we arrange it, in this moribund job market, so that people have to work till they’re seventy? It’ll be fun to see how many of them can even hold onto a job that long.’ Definitely. And don’t forget that setting up more competition for the already all too scarce job openings, means less cash in the hands of consumers. Think extended recession.

If the Deficit Commission isn’t worried about being fair to those who’ve put their money in, maybe the members could give a thought to the (im)practical consequences of what they’re considering.

Look, it’s simple. Make the wealthy pay social security taxes on their whole income, not just the first $106,800 per individual. And then quit borrowing from the trust fund.  That’s my two sentence recommendation.

Oh, and one more. Get Alan Simpson, Max Baucus and Kent Conrad the hell out of there.

… And still another: if you’d like to do something besides cuss about it all, call commission member Dick Durbin (1-202-224-2152). Something tells me he could use a nudge in the right direction.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), author of the GOP blueprint for running the country, the Roadmap for America’s Future, hopes that with the election of more GOP members to the House “”reinforcements are coming.” Why should seniors worry about this? Simply because the Roadmap pushes to “privatize Social Security and turn Medicare into a voucher system.”

Although in deference to election-year double-talk, the GOP has tried to keep a distance from the Roadmap, it isn’t hard to believe that, as Ryan declares, “‘dozens’ of House candidates have privately confided in him that they support the plan.”

I’m betting that many of those Roadmap supporters might even be from Missouri – pure speculation of course, but consider how poorly some of our GOPers have managed to hide their distaste for Social Security and Medicare over the past few years.

Roy Blunt may be leaving the House, but if he has his way this November, he’ll certainly bring the Roadmap mindset to the Senate. His grab bag “Jobs Plan,” where he proposes something he calls “real entitlement reform,” comes to mind immediately. We can guess what that reform would look like since he has regularly voted to slash Medicare benefits in the past. And, of course, there are his own words to the effect that it “would have been best if Medicare and Medicaid never existed,” and if we had privatized Social Security “quicker, like a decade, decades ago“.

Todd Akin is usually pretty cagey, but is on the record for being favor of privatizing Social Security. For instance, in a 2008 OpEd, in which he gushingly expressed his gratitude for George W. Bush’s “leadership,” Akin explicitly praised Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security:

You [i.e., Bush] had the courage to grab the “third rail of American politics” – Social Security – and alert Americans that the system is mathematically and economically broken

Although Akin, along with Blunt, has made lots of noise about the fact that the Affordable Care Act cuts private insurance subsidies for Medicare Advantage, he was one of the few Republicans who voted against Bush’s  Medicare Modernization Act which expanded drug benefits and set up those subsidies. Akin has also voted to slash billions from Medicare benefits over the years.

Another GOP poobah wannabe, Ed Martin, would, if elected, add a recruit to the Roadmap program as well. Although Martin has made all the required statements about the sanctity of Social Security, his record indicates that he isn’t too trustworthy. Additionally, he seems to be just a little too manic to keep his real agenda under his sleeve, tweeting:

Gotta find the Rep. Paul Ryan clips @MarkReardonkmox played. Ryan is THE man with THE plan!

So, there are at least three and probably more (Blaine Luetkemeyer comes to mind) supporters of Paul Ryan’s destructive agenda from Missouri. Of the three discussed above, Akin is a shoo-in since his opposition, Democratic candidate Arthur Lieber, disdains a realistic campaign, and Blunt and Martin are maybes. If we value Social Security and Medicare, we have to do whatever we can to make sure that they become “no ways.”

Roy Blunt’s so-called jobs plan makes it clear that he’s going to go to the wall to defend the Bush tax giveaways for his rich friends – even though he hasn’t got the chutzpah to do it upfront, but instead tries to use the discredited claim that it will create jobs. As for Robin Carnahan, we all know that she’s opted for strategic camouflage, trying to blend into Missouri’s Republican woodwork when it comes to this question.

Arguments against the tax giveaways seem to fall just short of cutting through the GOP flim-flam in spite of the fact that it is clear that extending tax cuts for the wealthy will not only fail to create jobs, but will feed the dreaded deficit. You do remember the deficit, don’t you – the club that Republicans and a few neutered Democrats have been using to beat back initiatives, like the currently languishing small business aid package, that might actually create jobs?

Given this environment, a little perspective on the costs of extending tax cuts for the richest 2% of the population might be apropos. According to Kathy Ruffing and Paul N. Van de Water in their summary of the 2010 Report of the Social Security Trustees:

The 75-year Social Security shortfall is about the same size as the cost, over that period, of extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans (those with incomes above $250,000 a year). Members of Congress cannot simultaneously claim that the tax cuts for people at the top are affordable while the Social Security shortfall constitutes a dire fiscal threat.

If you like visual props, this graph demonstrates the relationship:

Shouldn’t somebody ask our senatorial candidates whether the 315,000 families with a minimum yearly income of a million dollars are more deserving than millions of Americans who can look forward to a secure old age thanks to Social Security?

As much as I would like to see both Blunt and Carnahan cornered and made to answer just that question, with no retreat into stale, dishonest talking points allowed, I’m not  taking odds that such a thing will ever happen. Consequently we’ll just have to guess where they would stand, and when we do so, we should remember these facts:

–When it comes down to floor votes, Blunt has always been firm that the top 2% of Americans, the richest of the rich, shouldn’t be expected to pay their way like the rest of us do. That’s why he get’s a 0% ranking from Citizens for Tax Justice.

–Carnahan … well, she has indicated that maybe she doesn’t think the Bush tax giveaways for the wealthy should be made permanent – and, hey, we’re Democrats after all. In Missouri it seems we have to take what little we can get.

Addendum:Some thoughts from Ezra Klein on the intra-pundit controversy generated by the CBPP  contention that the tax giveaways equal the projected social security shortfall.

*2nd paragraph edited slightly for clarity.

The KC Star Prime Buzz seems to think that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) push to remind folks just what pols like Roy Blunt have really said about Social Security is just an election year ploy: “one of the oldest in the Dems’ playbook.”

One wonders why it doesn’t occur to the wise old souls at the Prime Buzz that they’ve heard this theme before because efforts to gut New Deal programs have been a Republican constant – although at times they have managed to mute their animus against popular programs like Social Security. As for the DSCC response, you may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but you can try to restrain him when he threatens your well-being.  

Unfortunately for the skeptics, the DSCC has the goods on targeted GOPers – often in their own words. For instance, Roy Blunt on Bush’s plan to privatize social security:

… It might have been better if we had done it quicker, like a decade, decades ago, but we didn’t.” [CNN, 11/10/04]

To be sure, Blunt, like most Republicans, seems to be more than willing to talk out of both sides of his mouth on this issue, but his record on Social Security and its sister plan, Medicare, speaks for itself. Who can forget Blunt arguing that government programs “distort” the market and it would have been better if programs like Medicare had never existed?

Republican wannabe wunderkind, Paul Ryan, in what Stephen Herrington calls his “quasi-official” Roadmap for America’s Future, proposes sunsetting both Social Security and Medicare. Politicians like Blunt know that it is political suicide to do more than tacitly endorse this Roadmap before the election – but I, for one,  don’t want to see Blunt come full circle and help enact the Roadmap or something like it if he manages to make it to the Senate.

   

It’s about time. By the way, how’s the concept of that private retirement account strikin’ yah today?

The transcript:

Remarks of President Barack Obama

As Prepared for Delivery

August 14, 2010

Washington, DC

Seventy-five years ago today, in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, laying a cornerstone in the foundation of America’s middle class, and assuring generations of America’s seniors that after a lifetime of hard work, they’d have a chance to retire with dignity.  We have an obligation to keep that promise; to safeguard Social Security for our seniors, people with disabilities, and all Americans – today, tomorrow, and forever.

Now, we’ve been talking for a long time about how to do that; about how to make sure Social Security is healthy enough to cover the higher costs that are kicking in now that baby boomers are retiring. And I’m committed to working with anyone, Democrat or Republican, who wants to strengthen Social Security. But what we can’t afford to do is privatize Social Security – an ill-conceived idea that would add trillions of dollars to our budget deficit while tying your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders and the ups and downs of the stock market.

A few years ago, we had a debate about privatizing Social Security. And 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. Because you shouldn’t be worried that a sudden downturn in the stock market will put all you’ve worked so hard for – all you’ve earned – at risk. You should have the peace of mind of knowing that after meeting your responsibilities and paying into the system all your lives, you’ll get the benefits you deserve.

Seventy-five years ago today, Franklin Roosevelt made a promise. He promised that from that day forward, we’d offer – quote – “some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against…poverty-stricken old age.” That’s a promise each generation of Americans has kept. And it’s a promise America will continue to keep so long as I have the honor of serving as President. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And have a nice weekend.

[emphasis added]

I thought so.