Social Security Works has assembled a set of slides that illustrate the Democratic Party's striking decline in voter opinion on the issue of Social Security. They're all worth seeing, but one of them especially demands attention:
When asked whether they trust the president or his opponents in Congress more on the issue of Social Security, people have less trust in Barack Obama than they did in George W. Bush when he had Obama's job. And the question was asked about Bush in 2005, at a time when his unpopular campaign to privatize Social Security was reaching its crescendo.
That's a stunning statistic. The Democratic Party created Social Security and was seen as its champion for three-quarters of a century. Yet voters have less trust in a Democratic president on this issue than they did for one who had pledged to privatize the entire system, and whose party opposed it from the beginning. And the difference isn't minor. 37 percent trusted Bush more than the opposition Democrats in 2005, which was considered a low number at the time. Yet only 26 percent trust Obama over the Republicans, even after their failed attempt to privatize the program -- and even though Democrats have a "brand identification" with Social Security.
The Republican privatization attempt was thought to have contributed significantly to that party's Congressional losses in 2006. Yet the president refuses to say that he won't cut Social Security, and he continues to have kind words for the reckless, inhumane, and unneeded proposals of his Deficit Commission co-chairs (the Commission was unable to agree to a plan).
In this climate, with these numbers, any attempt by the president to cut Social Security could only be described in one phrase: Political malpractice. Is that where he's headed? Or will he surprise us all by delivering a stirring, unequivocal defense of Social Security? After all the suspense and fear over this issue, that would be a political moment for the ages.
But if he's going to have a change of heart, he better act fast. The damage is already considerable. As Social Security Works explains, the 20-point advantage Democrats had on this issue for the last 15 years has evaporated, and trust in President Obama is roughly half of what it was for President Clinton on the same issue. Obama's performance is even worse among those much-sought-after independent voters. Only 18 percent of them trust him on this issue.
Other critical groups are sinking too. Democrats won seniors by seven points in 1996 and lost them by 21 percentage points in 2010. As Social Security Works writes:
Voters across all parties strongly oppose cutting Social Security benefits. 80% of the public opposes cuts to Social Security (70% strongly). Social Security is essentially a core value held by the public; politicians cut the program's benefits at their peril. Bipartisan majorities strongly oppose raising the retirement age to 69. They also oppose cutting benefits for those making more than $60,000 (essentially means-testing) because they recognize that people pay into Social Security and benefits are tied to the amount you contribute.
The public's preferred solution? "Bipartisan majorities support scrapping the payroll tax cap set at $106,800. They are comfortable requiring employers and employees to pay taxes on wages above that level."
Dan Froomkin reported on other poll findings in a piece entitled "Obama's Social Security Talk Is Turning Voters Off, Pollsters Say." It will turn them off even more in 2012, when Republicans spend millions reminding voters that the president broke his own unequivocal campaign pledge not to raise the retirement age or cut cost-of-living benefits. ("Let me be clear," said candidate Obama. "I will not do either.")
Why is this even an open question? Somehow, ideas that are widely rejected by the American public remain popular inside the Beltway Bubble. These ideas are usually mislabeled as "centrist" and "pragmatic" to give them mileage with credulous policymakers and journalists. (How can ideas be "centrist" when they're opposed by Democrats, Republicans, and independents by 70 percent to 80 percent overall? And how can they be be "practical" when the program's Chief Actuary under Ronald Reagan says they're not necessary or appropriate, and that lifting the payroll cap is a better approach?)
The latest attempt to push Social Security cuts tries to claim that these cuts aren't just "centrist" -- they're progressive, too. It's an intellectually dishonest work that wouldn't deserve attention if Obama's new chief of staff, JPMorgan executive Bill Daley, hadn't been a Board of Trustees member for the organization that authored it. Daniel Marans deconstructed it, so we won't repeat his work here. If anything he was too kind. (On the other hand, I did think that organization's suggestion that members of both parties sit together for the State of the Union was pretty sweet.)
It would be comforting to be able to say that this is all a misunderstanding and that the president will keep his promise to defend Social Security. But we can't do that. His silence about Social Security, especially after Harry Reid's stemwinding defense of the program, is disturbing. Reid and other members of the Senate and House are on the front line, and any attempt by Obama to triangulate and propose "bipartisan" cuts will devastate them. That's why there are reports like The Hill's of a strategic split between the president and Democrats in Congress: They're afraid he's going to sell them out for a personality-driven reelection campaign that suits his needs, not his party's or the country's.
And they've seen figures like these:
Democrats in the House and Senate are likely to be swept out of office if a Democratic president proposes cutting Social Security. Republicans will run a replay of their successful 2010 campaign, when they spent $71.1 million on ads claiming they were defending Medicare (a program they've always opposed) from Democrats. And as the first figure shows, a "centrist" strategy to cut Social Security won't help the president either. It's a lose-lose-lose strategy: for the president, his party, and the American people.
As we said, we'd like to reassure everybody that the president won't cut Social Security anyway. We'd like to say that he won't propose benefit cuts that will hurt working Americans, a group that's already been financially battered, and compound the harm that's already been done to his party's reputation. We'd like to say he won't break his own unequivocal campaign pledge to protect Social Security, and that he won't ignore the advice of Social Security experts by proposed hurtful and unnecessary cuts.
But we can't do that. Only he can. And he hasn't done it yet.
There's still time. The president can use his State of the Union speech to tell the American public, as clearly and forcefully as he did on the campaign trail, that he'll defend Social Security and oppose any cuts in benefits. That would be brilliant political theater. All the suspense and uncertainty would only amplify the effect if he rocked the public with a ringing, unequivocal affirmation of his support for Social Security.
The president can start rebuilding the public's trust, or he can continue to lose it. On the issue of Social Security, there is no other choice.
(UPDATE: There's yet another poll showing the public's strong support for Social Security, but this one has a new twist. As we summarized here, "Americans would rather reduce military spending than cut Social Security.")
Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. This post was produced as part of the Strengthen Social Security campaign. Richard also blogs at A Night Light.
He can be reached at "rjeskow@ourfuture.org."
Website: Eskow and Associates
Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
Obama started the hated fiscal commission that stars Alan Simpson and Bowles, whose main purpose is to get their fingers in Social Security. You need to read what they wrote about Social Security. They open it up for later 'adjustments'.
For the past 30 years, the government has used the surplus Social Security revenue to supplement its general revenue budget. The Social Security surplus was used as a giant secret slush fund, and even by spending it, the government could still not pay its bills. The days of significant Social Security surpluses are now over and decades of Social Security deficits lay ahead of us. Beginning in 2015, full Social Security benefits cannot be paid unless some of the looted money is repaid. The problem is that the government has made no provisions for repaying the money and may be unable or unwilling to repay it. With the national debt having skyrocketed from $1 trillion in 2001 to $14 trillion today, the government may be unable to borrow the money needed to repay its debt. Furthermore, it is unlikely that members of Congress could agree on cutting other budget items to generate the money. That leaves increasing taxes as the only other option. But the American people were conditioned by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to believe that raising taxes is just about the worst of all possible sins. Taxes cannot be increased without the support of both the public and the Congress. It may not be politically feasible for the government to raise taxes in order to repay the looted Social Security money.
The majority of people may have to pay for your retirement, if you have lost it all in the stock market or didn't bother to save. Social Security is good, because the money collected over the years protects those who think they will be rich by the time they are old, those who have no foresight and those who lose money in the stock market.
Consider your Social Security as bonds and invest your extra money in the stock market.
It's not even Social Security that bothers me. It's the lack of a choice. Social Security is broke, anyway.
The problem is that the SSA has a negative cash flow and will have to start paying out more money than they take in. The SSA will start cashing in their Treasury bonds in order to make up the shortfall. In other words, the Congress is not going to be able to use this as a revolving line of credit and have to start paying the money back to the SSA.
You may ask yourself, why was the FICA tax reduced if the system is in crisis? Well, another facet of this negative cash flow is that there are no more surplus FICA receipts in the SS system for the Congress to raid. But they have figured out a way to raid it anyway and that is the recent FICA tax reduction. The earnings not taxed for FICA become taxable income. Congress is redirecting revenue once reserved for our old age benefit directly into the U.S. Treasury. Instead of borrowing it they are simply taking it.
(continued in reply)
In my prior post I made a statement “The earnings not taxed for FICA become taxable income” which is ambiguous. What I mean by this is since the FICA tax is less; the net result is you have more taxable income. You’ll end up paying your nominal income tax on that 2% FICA “tax cut”.
The 2% Social Security cut, has given groups like American Enterprise Institute and people like Andrew Biggs a reason to say, "This pretty much ends the claim that Social Security is self-financing or that it doesn't contribute to the budget deficit."
Andrew is wrong. All it proves is the republican leaders think we are stupid and they can pull silly tricks like that and we will believe it. Apparently Obama thinks the same thing. They hope it will give them the right to cut Social Security 'since it is part of the general fund'.
The ignorance is mind boggling.
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/reports/trust/trustreports.html
THERE IS JUST ONE LITTLE PROBLEM NOT COVERED IN THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH. Every dollar of that $2.6 trillion of surplus Social Security revenue has already been spent on such things as tax cuts for the rich, two wars, and other government programs. None of the surplus revenue was saved or invested in anything. The spent money was replaced with IOUs that can in no way be used to pay benefits. The IOUs are claims against future tax collections which can be redeemed only by raising taxes, cutting other programs or increased borrowing. Most of the surplus money generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike was used to fund income-tax cuts for the rich. That money rightly belongs to the trust fund and to the workers who contributed the money. We should impose a special tax on the rich to fund repayment of the looted money.
by Allen W. Smith / January 13th, 2011
Most Americans have come to expect politicians to bend the truth, exaggerate the truth, and withhold part of the truth. But what about a high profile political leader who tells a whopper, that he knows to be untrue, especially when this whopper is designed to fool all Americans, not just his own constituents? That is exactly what Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, did in an interview with NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press,” on Sunday January 9. To read more, please click the link: http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/tax-the-rich-to-repay-looted-social-security-money/
Dr. Smith, author of "The Looting of Social Security" and "The Big Lie: How Our Government Hoodwinked the Public, Emptied the S.S. Trust Fund, and caused The Great Economic Collapse," says there is no justifiable reason for cutting Social Security benefits. Since most of the raided money was used to replace the lost revenue from the unaffordable income tax cuts for the rich, Smith thinks the money should be repaid through a special tax imposed on that same group of taxpayers. If the "borrowed" money is repaid, full benefits can be paid until 2037, Smith points out. And, Social Security could be made fully solvent for many more decades by simply removing the earnings cap on income subject to payroll taxes.
Contact:
Allen W. Smith, Ph.D.
1-800-840-6812
To be continued.
Senator Harry Reid told the truth in a Senate speech on October 9, 1990, when he expressed his outrage at the practice of looting the trust fund. Pointing to a chart displaying a single word in large letters, Senator Reid said,
“…On that chart in emblazoned red letters is what has been taking place here, embezzlement. During the period of growth we have had during the past 10 years, the growth has been from two sources. One, a large credit card with no limits on it, and, two, we have been stealing money from the Social Security recipients of this country.”
The practice, that Reid used the words, "embezzlement" and "stealing," to describe, in 1990, has continued, totally unchanged, to this very day. But Senator Reid lost his appetite for battling the looting once he got into a party leadership position. For two decades, Reid has watched the outrageous practice continue without doing anything to stop it. Now he just blantantly lies by saying Social Security is "fully funded for the next 40 years," when he knows better than anyone that, in just four years, full benefits cannot be paid unless some of the looted money is repaid.
"For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.
But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition."
The Dems don't pursue charity, they destroy it by breaking the sense of responsibility that children have always had toward the welfare of their parents.