Social Security is on the rack. The man about to turn the screws is Barack Obama. This should not be a surprise. The indictment of Social Security began many months ago when Obama cited 'entitlement' programs as a prime source of fiscal imbalance. Then, this past winter he sent to Congress a proposal that would have established a special commission mandated to make recommendations on so-called 'reform' of Social Security and Medicare that the legislature would be required to vote up or down as a package. This in the midst of the debate on health care. Congressional leaders demurred. Obama responded almost immediately by creating just such a commission stacked with avowed foes of keeping Social Security as we have known it. When that commission offers its predictable dire forecast to justify a drastic scaling back of the program, Obama will back it.
If there were any lingering doubts about the man's underlying social values and political perspective, they were violently uprooted by Robert Gibbs diatribe against progressives -- using language and imagery sure to warm the hearts of the most retrograde Tea Partier. Apparently, the White House is seething that some progressives are not bowing low enough in their obeisance to His Highness -- and a few recalcitrants aren't even genuflecting.
How tragic and dispiriting that a Democratic administration should take the knife to the landmark achievement of the New Deal which for seventy years has stood for social decency. The enemies of Social Security have executed an incessant, orchestrated campaign for a generation. With allies in the economics fraternity and the think tanks, they paved the way intellectually, politically and philosophically to annul the twentieth century's progressive milestone. Democrats have been mute and passive -- as is their nature. The falsehoods and distortions disseminated have become part of our public lexicon. They are taken as given even by those who are not congenitally ill-disposed toward Social Security. The current obsession with the federal deficit that has put Social Security on the block provides the occasion for the plan to reach its climax.
Facts seem to be irrelevant. Nonetheless here are a few. Entitlement programs are not the culprit for our fiscal difficulties. Social Security especially has been the target of the most intense disinformation campaign in modern American history. The simple truth is that the Social Security Trust Fund is solvent until at least the year 2040 -- according to every reasonable estimate. Its viability could be extended well beyond that date by the straightforward expediency of raising the income ceiling for withholdings. Today, it falls disproportionately on salaried workers -- up to about the $110,000 threshold. All salaries beyond that are not taxed. No funds from general revenues, i.e. income taxes, are expended on Social Security or Medicare.
The harsh reality is that the Social Security Trust Fund has been systematically looted for more than 40 years. That is to say, since the introduction of the consolidated budget in the 1960s. In effect, moneys have been regularly diverted to pay for other budgetary outlays, with I.O.U.s put in the Fund as place-holders. The assault on Social Security is driven, therefore, by two considerations. One is a rekindled doctrinal opposition to a governmental program that brought the United States in line with every other developed country (at much lower levels of retirement benefits). Two, the plot not to honor those I.O.U.s is a crude device to bring into congruence the expenditures and revenues of the Federal government without taxing the rich or curbing outlandish spending on our pointless wars and the military/intelligence establishment.
The Social Security Trust Fund has been the fiduciary responsibility of successive presidents and congresses. Elsewhere in our system of law and government, looting of this sort would result in the perpetrators spending long years behind bars. To deny the culpability of all those who have committed this deed in our name is to strike at the foundations of our social contract and system of accountable democracy. It does not compliment us a people to be passive accessories to such massive malfeasance.
Medicare is a somewhat different matter. Its financial outlook is of more concern. Prospects have been improved by the newly enacted legislation that will slash Medicare expenditures by a projected $400 billion to cover the largest part of the costs incurred by new programs. The long-term answer is obvious: there should be a serious reworking of our unconscionably wasteful, for-profit health care non- system -- none of whose structural features are altered by the Obama virtual 'reform.'
More important, we must regain a sense of social equity and national solidarity. Only then will we realize that, as a Confucian sage said, "humanity is the ultimate measure of all we do."