Do Republicans Want to Privatize Social Security?

[babylonsister]

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=08&year=2010&base_name=do_republicans_want_to_privati

Do Republicans Want to Privatize Social Security?


Conservatives have trouble on Social Security: They're uncomfortable that it redistributes wealth, that it represents a major government role in most citizens' lives, and with its widespread popularity. When it comes down to it, they're reluctant to say exactly what they'd do about the entitlement program if they had their druthers, except for making vague promises of reform and expressing worries about solvency. The sting of defeat from President Bush's privatization initiative makes them even more reluctant to engage the issue head on.

That's something of a problem for a crop of ultra-conservative Republican candidates, including Kentucky's Rand Paul and Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey, who is vying with Congressman Joe Sestak for the Keystone State's open Senate seat. Toomey had been a staunch advocate of privatization; all along, he favored a Bush-like plan allowing younger workers to divert a chunk of their payroll taxes to privately managed retirement accounts. But now he claims, "I've never said I favor privatizing Social Security."

So what does "privatization" mean, exactly? At its most extreme, privatization is simply ending Social Security and returning the responsibility of saving for retirement to individuals; as we saw before the advent of social-insurance programs, this tack is generally untenable if you want to maintain a robust economy and limit poverty, especially among the elderly. Since Republicans aren't proposing ending Social Security all at once, they claim that the term privatization is, as Toomey puts it, "an intentionally misleading term."

The semantic debate is pretty ironic coming from a party that happily assails President Obama's center-left agenda as "socialism." But still, "privatization" is an accurate term -- that it is freighted with negative political baggage doesn't make it incorrect. Once you start diverting money from public social insurance into private accounts, privatization is occurring, to the detriment of the broader solvency of the program.

Many Americans aren't comfortable with that and would like to see a Social Security reform agenda that focuses on strengthening the best aspects of the program in the long term, not radically reshaping it to pump more money into the financial sector. Democrats like to rhetorically ask what would happen had Bush's 2005 privatization plan become reality just before the financial crisis; we would have seen more retirements damaged and likely a larger bubble to pop.

Toomey's desire to sidestep the consequences of his Social Security agenda is a sign that one of the most rock-ribbed conservatives understands the radical nature of his proposition; reaching out to moderates is a part of every good general election plan, but I can't help but wonder what 2005-era Club for Growth President Pat Toomey would have said about rhetoric like that during his inquisition of moderate Republicans.

-- Tim Fernholz

[Xipe Totec]

1. No. They want to destroy it. nt

[babylonsister]

2. If you read this, you might consider they don't know what they

really want.

[Xipe Totec]

7. They know what they want. They just don't know how to get it

They want that pool of money that's just sitting there in Social Security.

What they can't figure out is how to take it and blame the Democrats.

But they'll figure out a way eventually.

[customerserviceguy]

8. There's no pool

But they would like to take the last 2% of the FICA tax and have it put into investments that stockbrokers can make commissions off of. They'd also love to be able to unload overvalued securities off onto these privatized accounts, the way that banksters have unloaded shitty mortgages off onto Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

If there were a tax increase of 2% in the FICA rates, and workers were given the option of taking a later retirement date (for full benefits) with the tradeoff that they could invest the same 2% in privatized accounts, then that might be a workable compromise.

[ProSense]

3. Didn't I read somewhere that

Democrats are the biggest threat to Social Security?

Wonder if they'd be willing to give Republicans a shot at it to test this that theory?

[babylonsister]

4. On DU? Probably. nt

[DJ13]

5. I think privatization at this time is a red herring

Its a diversion to make us glad that we only get a cut in SS instead of turning it over to the Wall Street criminals.

[gratuitous]

6. They just don't want to call it privatization

Doesn't test well, and the Republicans run mostly on polls anymore. They don't have any ideas or principles, so they have to fall back on lying about whatever they're talking about. As it is, the Republicans have pretty much done away with pensions (raided or stolen by crooked owners) and savings aren't even worth the cost of printing a monthly statement. Once they get rid of social security or make it susceptible to theft by fast-talking double-dealers, they can realize their dream of working the serfs to death.

[Capn Sunshine]

9. "They're uncomfortable that it redistributes wealth"

How in the F does the money I PAID INTO THE SYSTEM MY OWN DAMN SELF FOR MY ENTIRE WORKING LIFE qualify as a "resdistribution of wealth"? They just slip this shit in there like it's true. Damn.:grr:

[Rincewind]

10. Every time a working person

gets any money at all, even a penny, that is a redistribution of wealth, because it is taken from a wealthy person, or a business.At least, that is how the rebubs see it. If you are not rich, and /or an executive for a major corporation, then you are a drain on society. Haven't you read Ayn Rand?

[Bravo Zulu]

11. What does Pat Toomey have against Pennsylvania’s senior citizens, anyway?

Here’s Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, speaking about why it’s such a good idea for Wall Street to gamble with the thing most Americans count on for their retirement – Social Security: “I’m 47 years old…when I entered the work force, the Dow Jones average was around 800. Now, today, we’re all terribly disappointed in where it is, myself included, but it’s at 8,000. So, I’m not close to retirement yet, and the Dow is up by a factor of ten since I started working – despite all the losses we’ve seen in the last couple of years.”

Seriously, what is he thinking?

It’s something like this: anyone serious about achieving “real, market-based Social Security reform” understands that allowing Wall Street in is “the only real solution” to the problem, “while the boogeymen are the politicians who don’t trust the people enough to make their own decisions.”

Today, Pennsylvania seniors face an increasingly shaky retirement picture amidst the global financial collapse (the collapse that Toomey’s Wall Street policies helped to cause). But that doesn’t stop Toomey from being the nation’s loudest cheerleader for risky privatization plans.

Toomey was a full-throated backer of President Bush’s failed privatization effort, saying on his 2004 campaign website that Bush “courageously advocated this kind of change and, when Congressman Toomey is elected to the United States Senate, he will make Social Security reform one of his top priorities.”

After Toomey left Congress in 2005, he even complained that Bush didn’t go far enough: “Unfortunately, they’ve already made some concessions that I would have rather not seen.” Later that year, Toomey ran a $10 million special interest-funded campaign that was “taking names” of those Republicans who opposed the risky privatization schemes.

With more than 15% of the population older than 65, Pennsylvania has one of the largest state populations of senior citizens in the nation – a number that will only get higher as baby boomers continue to reach retirement age. Pat Toomey has been one of the nation’s biggest proponents of a giant influx of cash and customers for Wall Street through privatization of Social Security using what Republicans call “personal accounts.” While he was in Congress, he voted against strengthening the so-called “lockbox” for Social Security and he introduced a 60-page bill to achieve Social Security privatization. After leaving Congress and doing his job over at the free-market, right-wing Club for Growth, Toomey continued to push the issue, devoting an entire chapter to it in his book and publishing the op-Ed “Private Accounts or Bust,” in which he argues that “there is nothing scary about personal accounts.”

Yet, after a career of pushing for risky privatization schemes that would gamble away Pennsylvania seniors’ retirement money, Pat Toomey wants to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate.

http://toomeywatch.com/?page_id=137