Framing the Social Security debate

[MAlibdem]

1. SOCIAL SECURITY=EXTREMELY POPULAR GOVERNMENT PROGRAM
Say it with me: SOCIAL SECURITY=EXTREMELY POPULAR GOVERNMENT PROGRAM. Repeat this everywhere. It is true and will throw Republicans WAY off.

2. We need to use the Social Security issue to set the frame of reference for Bush's second term. We NEED to win this one to keep him off-balance and uneffective.

3. This IS the Democratic core position. Social protections against the excesses of capitalism is what the Democratic Party is all about, fundamentally. We need to defend against this attack against what is left of the social compact.

4. This is the worst political decision Bush has ever made. He is coming out of an election where as the incumbent he earned 51%, and in some polls is below 50% approval. So what does he decide? He decides to hit us where we are strongest - on the most popular government program ever, OUR PROGRAM. Good. This was the type of mistake Clinton made with gays in the military in his first term. Let's destroy Bush on this. It's fiscally irresponsible, it's dangerous for seniors, and it's just him giving government money to his investment friends.

5. Considering the above, a successful defense of Social Security and a fired up, pissed off base will help us a lot in the 2006 elections. Additionally, having incumbent Republican congresspeople who voted against Social Security (not to change it, they are AGAINST SENIORS), we have ourselves a wedge issue. Forget gay marraige and abortion, they are messing with much more important, moral-economic issues. Let's throw what we're weak on on the back burner, and turn the debate squarely where they should not be wandering.

6. With a Democratic House and Senate, Bush cannot make SC appointments that totally suck, AND we set the terms of the debate. When was the last time you heard of a bill a Democratic Congressperson or Senator proposed? It's been a while. So we have not only to defend Social Security, but use it as a rallying point to RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE and ENSURE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS. Of course, these sound basic to me, and they should to everybody.

[creeksneakers2]

1. I agree

This is the time, place, and way to fight.

[sandnsea]

2. Moral Obligation

To care for our elders, widows and orphans, disabled. It's scriptural even. That's what Social Security is.

[NoFederales]

3. The Social Security "Crisis" is a Damned Lie

You are spot on, MAlibdem. Here is some additional background and current information on the faint-hearted Democrats who are likely to support GWB and his SS killing. Two pieces from Josh Martin at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com (visit the site for other background).

(December 24, 2004 -- 02:26 AM EST )

From a piece I wrote about one of the President's 2001 pro-Social Security phase out astroturf groups, the Coalition for American Financial Security, or CAFS ...

"The most striking thing about CAFS is not that it is made up of interested parties from the financial-services industry, nor that it enjoys close connections to the White House. Rather, it is the extent to which the organization has emanated from a single corporation whose interest in privatization is driven as much by ideological zeal as by the expectation of profit.

The Frank Russell Company--creator of the Russell 2000 small-cap stock index--is known within the financial-services industry for spearheading privately funded initiatives aimed at spreading laissez-faire principles of economic organization in former socialist or mixed economies around the world. This has often meant setting up organizations that advocate the privatization of social-insurance programs: exactly what CAFS is now designed to do in the United States. Russell's efforts to jump-start the privatization debate in this country began two years ago when Russell CEO Michael Phillips started the company's Social Security reform initiative and assigned Don Ezra to coordinate it.

Ezra is a global avatar of privatization and laissez-faire. A soft-spoken British national, he has worked for Frank Russell in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. From Russell's European headquarters in London, he was involved in similar efforts to privatize social insurance in Europe. While in the United Kingdom, he stirred controversy with a report arguing that British pension-fund management gave too little say to investment professionals and that the managers of U.K. pension funds were overly burdened by such factors as the need for consensus and "too much caution" in choosing investments."

That's a bit from a July 2001 article I wrote on the Social Security privatization biz.
-- Josh Marshall


Is Harold Ford the Dean of the Fainthearted Faction? Could be. When last we left the Tennessee up-and-comer he was saying nice things about Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) private accounts bill. But little did we know that last year he came awfully close to co-sponsoring the private accounts bill of South Carolina Congressman Jim DeMint.

Here's a Bob Novak column cheering him on. Here's his statement of support for the DeMint plan on the Cato Institute 'Project on Social Security Choice' website. And here's a piece from South Carolina's The State on how he just couldn't quite get himself to sign on the dotted line at the last minute because even though he loved the plan he and DeMint couldn't decide how to pay for it.

Now, it just so happens that Congressman DeMint just got elected to the Senate. So that means that in the new Congress Ford will have the whole South Carolina Senate delegation covered in as much as that he's given the thumbs up to co-sponsoring partial phase-out bills with both of the state's senators.

In any case, a few other points. First, though he is sponsoring a partial Social Security phase-out plan, I will at least give Sen. Graham credit for a level of responsibilty on how to pay for it. He has publicly scolded President Bush's willingness to borrow one or two trillion dollars to finance his Social Security phase-out plan. And he himself has suggested eliminating the caps on payroll taxes (thus incresing the taxes on upper-income workers) to finance the transition.

At the end of the day, he still wants to partially phase-out Social Security and replace it with private accounts. And partial phase-out will lead to total phase-out. But there is some virtue I think in noting cases in which you have fundamental political and philosophical disagreements with someone and yet you can see that they are advocating what you see as bad policies with some measure of honesty and responsibility, in contrast to the likes of President Bush who is doing so with the characteristic recklessness and deception. Graham was also a standout on Abu Ghraib. So, anyway, I just wanted to noted these points.

And, though I've noted this several times, I want one more time to make this point about the Fainthearted Faction, and particularly those who got grandfathered in because of their opposition to the Filner Amendment (see this earlier post if you want to know what the hell I'm talking about), because I keep hearing from readers for whom the point doesn't seem clear.

Most of the folks who are now in the Faction are there because of their opposition to the Filner Amendment. That just means that they're the first people to look at (for the reasons described in this post) if we're trying to figure out which congressional Democrats seem most likely to sign on with Bush's plan.

As we noted earlier today, three congressmen who got grandfathered into the Faction because of their opposition to the Filner Amendment have made recent statements which state fairly clear opposition to the Bush plan. Congressmen Boyd and Smith are confirmed members of the Faction for recent actions or statements. And now Harold Ford is not only in the Faction but has actually become the Dean because of his rather lengthy history of openness to phasing out Social Security.

I know this all gets complicated. But bear with me since Social Security really is an important program.

Now, in addition to being the Dean of the Fainthearted Faction, another thing to note about Rep. Ford is that he's a man with big plans --- statewide office, national office, the sky's the limit. He ran against Nancy Pelosi two years ago to be the head of the Democratic caucus when he was only in his third term and thirty-two years old, for crying out loud.

So what I'm wondering is what big funders and groups of Democrats are going to go to Ford and tell him that if he ever wants to get out of his Memphis House district just who does he think it's going to be who's going to fund and staff out his campaign?

And what about those Republicans who might not quite be ready to sign on to President Bush's plan to phase out Social Security? You know, the Conscience Caucus. Florida's Mark Foley told the AP a few days ago that out of the 232 member GOP caucus in the 109th Congress, between 125 to 150 of them might need "a lot of hand-holding" to get them to sign off on ending, or ... okay, okay, partially ending Social Security. And Illinois' Ray LaHood seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

So the Conscience Caucus may include a good seventy, eighty, even a hundred members. And they, after all, are the real issue.

The reason it's so critical to get every Democrat lined up with the right position in favor of Social Security is not simply or even principally because of the significance of their individual votes. After all, if the president can keep all his troops together they don't need any Democratic votes. The point is to raise the stakes, to make the moral responsibility as stark and as clear as possible.

If President Bush is intent on destroying Social Security and replacing it with a private accounts system, let him do it with Republican votes only. Republicans in marginal districts will be far less likely to sign on to his plan if it's an exclusively Republican enterprise, if there are no Democrats along for the ride to muddle the picture and provide illusory bipartisan cover.
-- Josh Marshal

It doesn't get any more plain than this. Stir it up. Call your representatives and get them on record and then lets post everything State-by-State and make it clear to everyone just WHO is willing to what TO WHOM! Do not sit idly by and watch the SS killing--this is not reality TV.

NoFederales

(On edit to correct username.)

[robbedvoter]

4. Not just popular - SUCCESSFUL!

Bush criticized energy policy, federal land use policy, subsidized housing, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“a misuse of power,” he said), and he warned that Social Security would go bust in ten years unless people were given a chance to invest the money themselves. None of this really distinguished him from Hance, though, so in the end Bush simply argued that a Republican could better represent the district: “If you want a chance in the way Congress has been run, send someone who will be independent from those who will run the Congress.”
http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/midland.html
Prediction made in ...1978

[NoFederales]

5. The Essence of Bush Lies on SS

These excerpts are from Gene Lyons of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 12-23-04:

"But here's what (Dan)Bartlett, Bush and the think-tank spokesmen actually mean when they say Social Security's going broke: They mean that the trust fund has been looted fair and square, that everybody who's been paying those increased payroll taxes since 1983 has been successfully swindled and that the U.S. government need not honor those specialissue Treasury bonds. As Smith writes, it's a financial "crime against the American public that makes Enron pale in comparison."

"After pledging during the 2000 campaign to set aside $2.6 trillion of the projected surplus in a Social Security "lockbox," Bush has, instead, produced swelling deficits. Now he promises strict "fiscal discipline." Do not hold your breath. Here's the real problem: Over the past two decades, ever since a commission led by Alan Greenspan convinced the Reagan administration to raise payroll taxes to fund the retirement of the socalled Baby Boom generation, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have "borrowed" the proceeds to finance the year-to-year operations of the U.S. government.

(And so), "according to Allen W. Smith, author of "The Looting of Social Security":" Instead of investing the Social Security surpluses in regular marketable Treasury bonds that could be cashed in whenever additional money was needed for benefits, the government simply spent the money, leaving nothing to invest. The government IOUs held by the trust fund are not at all like regular marketable Treasury bonds.... hey are nothing more than accounting entries that tell us how much the government owes to the Social Security fund. They couldn't be sold to private investors even at a penny on the dollar because they have absolutely no cash value. "



The Lower and Middle Class Laborers, since 1983, have been swindled and the cover-up, under the guise of "reform", or "privatization" is supposed to hide the fraud. It may well be that 51% of Americans are too damned stupid, or lazy, to realize what is happening to them, but what about the rest of us? We know better. As Sean Connery's character, Malone, says in the Untouchables about Capone's mob tactics, "What are you prepared to do?" Indeed. What are we prepared to do?

NoFederales

[lawladyprof]

6. And give it a religious spin

The Ten Commandments is for nations as well as individuals. "Honor thy fathers and mothers, America."

[auburngrad82]

7. SS cut the poverty rate among seniors by 2/3 eom