WMD Stockpiles: Bush's Social Security "Crisis"

12-16-04 ...(click on image for larger version)

After George W. Bush earned his "political capital" by squeaking by John Kerry in 2004, he decided to make a big push for his much-hyped plan to "save" the Social Security by letting Americans play the stock market with their SS funds.

The Republican talking point during this attempt said that unless America immediately took a radical step like privatization, Social Security would implode within days (well, OK, not literally days, but you get the idea). As the cartoon above attempted to highlight, like the lead up to the war in Iraq, Bush's privatization push was another fear-based hype job intended to sway public opinion in favor of a bad idea that extreme elements of the Republican Party had dreamed for years about pulling off.

The reality, of course is that despite the right-wing noise machine, it is important for the American public to understand there is almost nothing "wrong" with Social Security itself, or so says U.S. Senate candidate Steve Novick.

You'd never know that was Novick's position, however, by listening to the rhetoric and negative polling conducted by Novick's primary opponent, Jeff Merkley, whose truthiness-challenged line of attack against Novick tries to tie the fighter with a hard left hook to Bush's wingnut plan to tear down a hallmark of the New Deal.

As Novick points out above, he wants nothing to do with the hysterical GOP claims that there is an immediate crisis with Social Security that requires radical action. But he is honest enough to realize, like Barack Obama and Peter DeFazio, that some modest tweaks may be necessary to deal with previous fiscal irresponsibility that could leave the program struggling when the 'boomer bill comes due.

Here's Novick's actual policy statement from his website:

"In 1983, Congress raised Social Security taxes on working people, collecting more taxes than needed to pay current benefits, in order to build up a trust fund that could be used to pay the benefits of the baby boomers when they retire. But every President since then - except for Bill Clinton in his second term - has borrowed from that trust fund to pay for other programs. George Bush has borrowed about $150 billion a year, to pay for the war in Iraq and tax cuts that favored the wealthiest Americans. In the meantime, he also continues to push for ‘privatizing' Social Security - so he can escape the blame for his borrowing endangering the funds for senior citizens in the future."

"It would be a betrayal of the worst sort to begin cutting the retirement benefits of working Americans, particularly after they’ve been paying extra taxes for the past two decades to shore up the system. To stop that from happening, the federal government will need to repay its debt to Social Security - which may require cutting other spending or raising revenue."

"One way to raise revenue would be to ask wealthier Americans to contribute more. Right now the Social Security tax doesn't apply to incomes above $97,500. In other words, if you make $1 million a year, over 90% of your income is exempt from Social Security taxes. We might need to apply the Social Security tax to incomes above $100,000. If we do, steps could be taken to limit the tax hit on families making in the $100,000 to $150,000 range - many of whom probably don't feel rich. Barack Obama, Peter DeFazio and I support lifting the cap, while my opponent in the primary does not."

That seems pretty clear. And it's nothing like the GOP talking point that says Social Security is so endangered it requires radical change. Anyone who says Novick is echoing GOP talking points is simply wrong. Anyone who makes that bogus claim repeatedly is something worse.