Who would have thought desparate Dems would use Social Security scare tactics?
Image via WikipediaReviving a scare tactic that Democrats have used before, President Obama said in his radio address Saturday that "some Republican leaders in Congress" want to privatize Social Security.Here is the real threat to Social Security. It is on an unsustainable trajectory that will require confiscatory taxes of the young to make the benefit payments to the old and Democrats do not want to do anything to work on that problem.
The specter of a threat to the program that provides retirement income to senior citizens is a preview of an attack that Democrats intend to make this fall, as they hope to blunt what appears to be a Republican surge in congressional elections.
"I'd have thought that debate would've been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we've just experienced," Obama said of privatizing Social Security. "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."
But GOP leaders are not pressing for privatization. The idea proved so unpopular when President George W. Bush proposed it in 2004 that Congress, then led by Republicans, never took it up. The concept lives on in a budget proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, but only a handful of GOP lawmakers have signed on to that measure. And, in the aftermath of the worst shock to the financial system since the Great Depression, many Republican lawmakers would just as soon see the idea forgotten.
Meanwhile, a coalition of 60 liberal groups and advocates for the elderly, including the AFL-CIO and MoveOn.org, are predicting a different threat to Social Security: the possibility that a bipartisan deficit commission created by Obama will propose slashing benefits to help dig the nation out of debt.
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You would think that responsible people would want to make sure there is a way to deliver on the promises made or revise the promise in a timely manner so people can adjust their own plans. No. That is not the Democrat way. They would rather hammer Republicans and hope the problem goes away.
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