Greg Sargent: Flashback: Clinton said Dems needed a plan on Social Security, too. He was wrong.

[flpoljunkie]

Flashback: Clinton said Dems needed a plan on Social Security, too. He was wrong.
By Greg Sargent

Bill Clinton is getting a lot of attention this week for his claim that Dems must not conclude from their victory in NY-26 that they don’t need a plan of their own on Medicare. “I hope Democrats don’t use this as an excuse to do nothing,” Clinton said.

So it’s worth recalling that during the big fight over Social Security in 2005, Clinton said exactly the same thing. And politically, he was wrong.

“I think the Democrats should say what they are for on Social Security,” Clinton said in May of 2005. “I think that the Democrats should have a plan and they should talk to the president and the congressional Republicans about it.”

Nancy Pelosi, by contrast, insisted at the time that offering a Dem plan would confuse the public by onvincing people there was something that needed fixing. Instead, Pelosi took to saying: “We have a plan. It’s called Social Security.”

Pelosi turned out to be right — the hard line in defense of Social Security Dems maintained was key to the defeat Bush’s privatization scheme.

Now Clinton is giving similar advice about Medicare — Dems need a plan. And Pelosi is insisting Dems should say: “We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.”

So who’s right this time?

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/flashback-clinton-said-dems-needed-a-plan-on-social-security-too-he-was-wrong/2011/03/03/AGjvxFCH_blog.html

[Vincardog]

1. “We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.” Fuck with it and retire to FUX SnewZ

[whathehell]

3. Damn right. n/t

[LiberalFighter]

12. We have another plan. It's called Single Payer Health Care.

Or the extension of Medicare.

[AtomicKitten]

14. Brava Nancy!

[damntexdem]

2. The Democrats HAVE a plan for SS:

raise the FICA cap -- or eliminate it completely.

End of story.

[whathehell]

4. Damn right to you too!

Raise the cap -- or eliminate the cap completely...YES.

[customerserviceguy]

6. There's no cap on Medicare payroll taxes

And that program is going to go broke way before Social Security will. Frankly, I think the projections on when Social Security is going to dry up are optimistic.

The surest way to eliminate both programs is to pretend that there's nothing wrong with them, and that they will last forever without serious tweaking. The baby boom generation is starting to hit them like a battering ram.

[whathehell]

7. I would bet you're years away from receiving it..

Whatever is "wrong" with Medicare and other so-called "entitlement"

programs could be be helped immensely by

taxing Wealth at the rate

of past administrations.

Middle class people who have saved and invested

all of their lives are not going to be

ripped off so GE, the Oil Industry,

and the rest of the Uber Rich

can have more tax breaks.

[customerserviceguy]

8. I'm closer to 56 than to 55 right now

And I have my doubts that Social Security will be there for me at 67. I'm trying like crazy to pile away every dollar I can toward retirement, as I turned 50 without anything saved, as I had to drain what little I had when a relationship didn't work out the way that I had intended.

Right now, Social Security is paying out more than FICA taxes coming in. Yes, they've been able to do a few tricks with the interest on the special trust fund securities, but that just means we're borrowing it from China. I don't see when that situation is going to reverse itself, the few jobs that are coming back don't pay anything nearly as much as the jobs we lost.

Also, this year, the first wave of boomers turns 65. The tide will rise for the next 12-13 years, until we hit the eligibility for full benefits of the peak boom year, 1957. There are another seven years left of the rest of the boomers, and many, if not most of the ones retiring this year will still be collecting. That math is inescapable.

Yes, we're going to have to raise taxes, both FICA taxes (and caps) and general taxes to try to achieve not a balanced budget, but one that runs a surplus to redeem the trust fund securities. I don't know where we're going to find elected officials with the political courage to do this, especially with an electorate mired in denial.

[whathehell]

10. Okay...

Yes, we're going to have to raise taxes, both FICA taxes (and caps) and general taxes to try to achieve not a balanced budget, but one that runs a surplus to redeem the trust fund securities. I don't know where we're going to find elected officials with the political courage to do this, especially with an electorate mired in denial".

I doubt there will be much trouble "finding" them...It's a matter of electing them and pushing out the cowards and the sell-outs.

The answer to the question of when this will happen is this:

When we work hard enough to elect them and throw the others out...It's happening already...You can see how Ryan's "plan" for Medicare has worked out, and how the republicans are now all running scared from it, or trying, lamely to "re-label" it.....Similar thing with the attempted union-busting of republican governors in the midwest...Actions to recall them have begun in earnest.

It happens when "we the people" get involved, show up, speak out and vote our interests....It sure beats wringing our hands and giving up.

[KoKo]

5. Nice Post..Thanks! K&R!

[dwilso40641]

9. Clinton

signed NAFTA and you seen how well that worked out. The more he talks the less I think of him.

[whathehell]

11. Same here...

I certainly had my suspicions (as did Rachel Maddow) watching him

glad-hand Paul Ryan last night, when he didn't know cameras were on him, telling

him how he was afraid the democrats will use their victory in

New York to "do nothing" on Medicare"....What, pray

tell, does he want to "do"?

He's not "the greatest" by any means

and he never was....As Michael Moore said "the best Republican president

we ever had".

[AtomicKitten]

15. The perils of cell phone cameras at the most inconvenient times.

I think this conversation revealed an inconvenient truth about BClinton and that is he wants to finish the business of going after Medicare and Social Security, something he made a pact with NGingrich to do in the late 1990s, that was left unfinished because of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

[Avant Guardian]

13. Clinton didn't give tax cuts to billionares

On the contrary, first thing he did when he won was REVERSE them.