The Social Security Crisis That Democrats Actually Did Claim Was A Crisis Before They Claimed It Wasn’t A Crisis

1-24-2005

In an excellent article on the subject of Social Security reform titled, ‘The Innumeracy of it All!’, the first paragraph of Donald Luskin’s piece says it all. “In the debate over Social Security reform, the dollar figures involved can be dauntingly large and dizzyingly complex. That opens up a lot of opportunity for demagogic mischief, and the leftist opponents of reform are taking full advantage.”

As a matter of fact, the Democrats who are out there assailing Social Security reform are going to an even greater extreme on this subject than on just about anything else they’ve ever set their sights on trying to destroy.

Let’s start with the grandson of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who doesn’t like that his grandfather’s image has been used in an advertisement for President Bush’s plan to partially privatize Social Security. James Roosevelt Jr., wrote in a letter that, "My grandfather would surely oppose the ideas now being promoted by this administration,” and continued later by equivocating that the Bush administration is planning, “to dismantle the most successful social program in history is simply unconscionable."

It’s one thing to resist change because you believe the result may diminish the integrity or achievement of a loved one. It’s something altogether different to blatantly use mendacious attacks to belittle someone in the process.

Only in the minds of Democrats could the proposal to create personal accounts for individuals who choose to do so with a portion of their Social Security taxes be misconstrued into an effort to ‘dismantle’ the program.

Add to that their new mantra that Social Security is the greatest ‘social program in history’. This little ditty also gives a modicum of insight into the mindset of Democrats where they deem a social program created by a Democrat and administered by the government is somehow better than the most empowering emancipation of financial and societal advancements for mankind that the world has ever seen, generated by...Capitalism!

Of course, in the world of liberalism, Capitalism is the evil that begets all evil unless it is filling the coffers of fellow liberals and their families. The part of the equation that they continue to suppress in their arguments is the fact that without the benefits of Capitalism there would not be a Social Security program because there wouldn’t be a financial platform to support it.

And that platform, through years of untended maturation, is nearing a point of not being sustentative, or as the President has stated many times, is at a moment of crisis. Media elitists and liberal pundits would call that statement ‘scare mongering’ and they have come out in the press in droves to assert that a ‘crisis’ in Social Security just doesn’t exist.

Some of these pundits have danced around the facts in their attempt to prove there is no ‘crisis’, while others have outright lied about them. All of them assert the system isn’t going broke and that any possible insolvency problems that might become evident a long time away in the future can simply be rectified by a few minor changes to the system or the fail-safe Democrat cure-all by just raising taxes on working families.

One recent columnist wrote that ‘Social Security is not in a crisis’ and that ‘there is no imminent threat’, because ‘even without a single change, the checks will continue to go out as scheduled at least until 2042.’ Then discredited his own thesis by ending his column with this unintended ‘scare tactic’, ‘For decades, the federal government has borrowed from the Social Security "trust fund" surplus to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars in government services. Starting in 2018, when the cost of benefits will begin to exceed payroll tax revenue, that bill will come due and Social Security will demand repayment. That in turn will require the rest of the government to raise taxes, cut spending, or pile on more debt to pay off the debt to Social Security.’

So I ask you, do you think there is a ‘crisis’ when in 2018... thirteen years from now... the cost of benefits being paid to Social Security recipients exceeds the amount of tax revenue that is being collected?

You see, that’s when the program starts to cash in the government bonds that have been purchased and the combination of the two will then only sustain the system at the current rate until the best estimate of the year 2042. Then it’s estimated there will be at least a reduction of 27 percent in benefits, because the trust funds will be completely extinguished.

When White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked about the ‘crisis’ that Democrats and media elitists assert isn’t a crisis, he responded with a quote: "And all of you know, to a greater or lesser degree of specificity, every one of you know that the Social Security system is not sound for the long-term so that all of these achievements -- the economic achievements, our increase in social coherence and cohesion, our increase in efforts to reduce poverty among our youngest children -- all of them are threatened by the looming fiscal crisis in Social Security. This is our obligation to you and, frankly, to ourselves. And let me explain that. The fiscal crisis in Social Security affects every generation. We know that the Social Security trust fund is fine for another few decades, but if it gets in trouble and we don't deal with it, then it not only affects the generation of the baby boomers and whether they'll have enough to live on when they retire, it raises the question of whether they will have enough to live on by unfairly burdening their children, and therefore, unfairly burdening their children's ability to raise their grandchildren."

As Bill Clinton himself said on February 9th, 1998, “The fiscal crisis in Social Security affects every generation.” Democrats thought there was a ‘crisis’ in Social Security in 1998 as Scott McClellan so shrewdly pointed out, yet now that the crisis they assured us existed then is ever closer to happening, they no longer see a crisis.

It’s amazing the cacophony Democrats generate when lambasting the ‘huge deficits’ they assure us will be passed down to our children and grandchildren, but now grow ever silent about the looming ‘crisis’ that will be a lack of funding for future generations of retirees.

The simple fact of the matter is that Democrats see Social Security as somehow being exclusively theirs to harbor and manage. If it is changed only slightly and even if the change is seen as being for the betterment of the program while a Republican is president, they will continue to scream bloody murder. They don’t care about making it better unless they get credit for it… exclusive credit, not co-operative credit.

They have already drawn the line in the sand on this issue. The crisis they promoted only a few short years ago, in their defiance, has now mysteriously rectified itself. The more Democrats promote political expediency in their party ahead of what’s best for working Americans, the more voters they will continue to lose.

Lee P Butler