The Blue State

Putting Social Security debate back into forefront

On January 1st at 12:01 AM, the first baby boomers will turn 62 years of age and be eligible to receive Social Security benefits from the government.  Other than the 2008 presidential primaries, of course, Social Security will soon thrust itself into the spotlight for the first time since 2005 as the number one political issue.

Each day, starting at the beginning of 2008, more baby boomers will begin receiving benefits:

The first wave of 3.2 million baby boomers turns 62 next year — 365 anhour. About 49% of the men and 53% of the women are projected to chooseearly retirement and begin drawing monthly Social Security checksrepresenting 75% of the benefit they'd be entitled to receive if theywaited four more years to retire.

The question is what to do about a system that is indeed running a surplus, but is projected to dip into red ink sometime between 2040 and 2055?  Should we partially privatize the system, eliminating guaranteed benefits for seniors?  Should we raise the retirement age?  Or should we remove the cap on the regressive payroll tax so that people making more than $97,000 pay the exact same percentage of their income?

There are many things we can do.  Either way, this will transform into a huge issue over the next several months.

Social Security on the line this November

Right before the 2004 election, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was accused of scaring seniors into thinking President Bush wanted to privatize Social Security.  Unless you missed all of 2005, Kerry's prediction turned out to be accurate, although the GOP failed to get it passed.

Many believe that after November, the GOP will renew its push to privatize the system -- This privatization scheme would cut guaranteed benefits for seniors and add $2 trillion to the National Debt in transition costs (National Debt = Birth Tax).  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a sudden spike in the National Debt beyond what it already is today would lead to higher interest rates.

The only way to assure that this privatization scheme does not pass the House and Senate is by voting blue.  Politics is usually complex.  But that reality is quite simple.

Expect GOP smears of AARP to start again

During last year's push by President Bush to privatize Social Security, the AARP weighed in and opposed the Bush's plan because it would have cut guaranteed benefits for seniors.  A number of conservative groups, such as one in particular called USA Next, launched television ads that smeared the seniors group, labeling them as liberal, anti-military and pro-gay.

I would not be surprised if the AARP gets smeared again, this time by the big drug companies.  The AARP group is lobbying Congress to allow seniors to buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada -- an effort to bring down the overall cost of medicine:

The AARP is launching a $500,000 ad campaignSunday in 14 states pushing for Senate action on legislation that wouldlet consumers buy U.S.-made prescription drugs from Canada and othercountries.

The ads will appear in newspapers and on radioin cities such as Baltimore, Indianapolis, Anchorage, and Des Moines.David Certner, legislative policy director for the advocacy group, saidthe campaign focuses on the home states of senators who have shown someopenness to letting people buy U.S.-made medicine shipped abroad.

"This is going on right now regardless of thelaw. People are going outside the country to buy their medicine," hesaid. "We want to make sure the system is as safe as we can make it."

The bill that AARP supports, written by Sen.Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has bipartisan support from 31 co-sponsors. Itwould allow purchase of U.S.-made prescription drugs from Canada andeventually from other countries such as Australia, Japan and nationswithin the European Union.

The Republicans, especially those who receive big campaign contributions from drug companies, are expected to oppose this measure.

Bush to privatize Social Security if Dems don't win majority

A lot will be at stake this November -- maybe even more so for seniors and young Americans.  The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that President Bush will restart his push to privatize Social Security in 2007 if Republicans regain control of the House.  John Marshall of TPM Cafe reports:

In an interview published today in The Wall Street Journal (sub.req.),President Bush told editorial page editor Paul Gigot that next year heplans on partially phasing out Social Security and replacing it withprivate accounts, and that he thinks he can do it as long as theRepublicans retain control of Congress, which he thinks they will.

President Bush's Social Security privatization proposal calls for private savings accounts.  The proposed switch from public to private accounts would add $2 trillion to the National Debt over the next ten years due to transition costs.  Ten years after that, the privatized Social Security system would cost $3 trillion, $5 trillion the decade after that, and $5 trillion the decade after that -- most of which would have to be borrowed from foreign banks in China and the Middle East.  All this added debt would be a birth tax on future generations.

Lastly, even more fundamentally, Bush's privatization proposal cuts guaranteed benefits for seniors and future retirees:

According to the Social Security Administration's chief actuary, amiddle-class worker retiring in 2022 would see guaranteed benefits cutby 9.9 percent. By 2042, average monthly benefits for middle- andhigh-income workers would fall by more than a quarter. A retiree in2075 would receive 54 percent of the benefit now promised.

This is what the President and his Republican Congress want to happen next year if they regain control of Congress.  So who are you voting for this November?
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Other sites blogging about Social Security: Digg, Raw Story, TPMCafe, Crimes and Corruptions of the New World, Speaking Truth to Power, The Pennsylvania Progressive, Impolitically Correct, The Opinion Mill, Democrats.com, Mass Eye Opener, Suburban Guerrilla, Running From the Thought Police, News Trash, Celtic Progressive.

Video: Colbert mocks GOP's Social Security privatization ideology

Last night on the Colbert Report, host Steven Colbert mocked the Republican position on Social Security, which concludes that we should leave our seniors out in the cold to fend for themselves:

Click to watch video clip

COLBERT: "I say retirement is a reward only for our most productive.  It's an incentive.  You get to retire when you've done your work.  And if you aren't rich enough to retire, you obviously still have more work to do.

"...Putting old people to work could solve another big problem: illegal immigration.  If we deport illegal immigrants, who will do the job Americans don't want to do?  Bingo, as in get those old people out of the bingo parlors and into the fields."

Sometimes it takes a comedian like Steven Colbert to expose how crazy the GOP proposal to privatize Social Security really is (obviously that part about illegal immigration was just a comedic add-on, and not really part of the GOP plan).  What Colbert did not mention was the fact that the Republican Social Security privatization scheme would add $2 trillion in transition costs to the National Debt for future generations to pay off.  Sound like a good plan?

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Other blogs writing about this issue: Blue Buckeye Blog, MyDD, Left in the West.

Fighting fire with fire

Fine.  If Republicans want to divert attention away from issues that real Americans care about by pandering to the right -- with flag burning, gay marriage, the estate tax, guns and religion -- then we will try some strategy of our own.  But unlike the Republican strategy, ours is more substantive.

Bruce Braley, who is running for U.S. Congress as a Democrat in the state of Iowa, used the Democratic radio address to expose what the Republicans want to do to Social Security in 2007 if they maintain control of Congress

"If the Republican plan is allowed to pass, future generations bothhere and across the country will be saddled with decades of debt and noguaranteed retirement security," Bruce Braley said in the Democrats'weekly radio address.

Braley, 48, a lawyer from Waterloo, faces Republican Mike Whalen inthe contest to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Rep. JimNussle, who is running for governor. The race is considered one of themore competitive in the country.

Braley said Social Security is under attack, with President Bush andcongressional Republicans making privatization a top priority in 2007.He also accused the Bush administration of "plundering the SocialSecurity trust fund while giving billions away to special interests,like big oil."

"They are spending the money seniors rely on while making no effortto balance the budget or protect the limited funds we have forretirement security," he said.

..."This is the same team that set out to reform Medicare but insteadlet lobbyists create a confusing, expensive program that was littlemore than a payoff to the big pharmaceutical and insurance companies,"Braley said of the Medicare prescription drug plan.

The truth cannot be denied.  Even this Fox News article admits that the Bush Social Security plan, if enacted, would add $2 trillion worth of transition costs to the National Debt.  So you want to talk about fear?  This is actually what will happen in 2007 unless Democrats gain a majority in Congress this November.  We need a majority that will stick up for the common folk.

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Other blogs writing about this issue: Dad29, Thoughts of an Average Woman.

Norquist unveils GOP strategy to kill Social Security

When most people think of the GOP's recent downward trend in the polls, issues such as Iraq, gas prices, corruption, Katrina and health care come to mind.  But the first crack in the GOP's reign on Capitol Hill came last year during the fight over Social Security.  After months of debate and an outright rejection of Bush's proposal by senior citizens, the Republican effort to dismantle FDR's Social Security system went cold last summer.  Ever since then, no Republican has talked about it, fearing a backlash from senior voters -- which has consistently shown to be the demographic most likely to show up at the polls on election day.

But all of a sudden, there is a slight murmur of chatter among the top levels of the Washington GOP establishment.  Famous GOP strategist Grover Norquist is saying that if the Republicans hold the Senate, or even pick up five more seats, they will go after Franklin Roosevelt's Social Security program and dismantle it for good.

Marie Cocco of the Washington Post Writers Group has the low-down on the GOP Social Security attack plan:

Plans to resuscitate President Bush's stone-cold proposal to turnSocial Security from a guaranteed insurance program into a patchwork ofprivate savings accounts already are in the works. All it will take,says Grover Norquist, conservative strategist extraordinaire, is theelection of another five conservative Republican senators -- enough tosurmount procedural roadblocks by Democrats or those tremulousRepublican moderates who would try to preserve the nation's mostsuccessful and best-loved government program.

     ``I believe that when there are 60 Republican senators we willmove Social Security from the present Ponzi scheme to a fully funded,individually held system,'' Norquist told journalists brought togetherby The American Prospect magazine.

Obviously, as you probably know, Norquist is referring to President Bush's Social Security plan, which would privatize the system.  It would do away with giving guaranteed benefits to retirees and add more than $2 trillion worth of transition costs to the National Debt.

Now you know what is bound to happen if the Democrats do poorly this November.

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More blogs writing about this issue: Angry Bear, Streak's Blog, Life is Crap, TPM Cafe, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, A Taxing Matter, Change for Missouri, FCDC, Zag Pol Blog.

Study: The effect that making tax cuts for wealthy permanent will have on debt

The Republicans have been talking a lot about how Social Security is going bankrupt, and therefore it needs to be privatized.  But in a study from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the current proposal by the GOP to make tax cuts permanent will have three times as much strain on the national debt than Social Security.  Look at this chart from CBPP:

The report from The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities adds:

"Anyone concernedabout Social Security’s long-term impact on the federal budget ought tobe even more concerned about the long-term fiscal impact of extendingthe 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.  If made permanent, the tax cuts will costnearly three times as much, over the next 75 years, as the 75-yeardeficit in Social Security (see Figure 1).  Any attempt to address thelooming fiscal challenges should include Social Security, Medicare (andthe U.S. health care system as a whole), and overall government revenues...Private accountsfinanced by borrowing would aggravate the problem, as they would drainresources from Social Security and increase its deficits for at leastseveral decades."

An article today in the Houston Chronicle said that GOP leaders in both chambers of Congress are a near a deal. 

If you're strongly against making these tax cuts permanent -- which will add to the debt and increase the gap between the wealthy and the middle class -- then e-mail your Representative and Senators and tell them to block the measure.