The Social Security Pledge Versus the Old Politics

By Dean Baker truthout October 11, 2010

http://www.truth-out.org/the-social-security-pledge-versus-old-politics64081

President Obama made a big point during his campaign of
running against the old style of politics. He promised
to bring a new atmosphere of bipartisan cooperation and
openness to the political system.

The bipartisan cooperation part has not turned out very
well, primarily because the Republican leadership has
shown very little interest in cooperation or compromise
on anything. However, it looks as though President
Obama is prepared to jettison the openness part of his
commitment himself.

This comes in the context of the president's deficit
commission, which is carrying through most of its work
in secret. The current plan is to have this commission
make a report, which will then be given a rushed up or
down vote after the election. This means that a lame
duck Congress, including dozens of member who were just
voted out of office, will be making crucial decisions
on Social Security, Medicare, and other essential
programs.

The two co-chairs of the commission, former Wyoming
Sen. Alan Simpson and Morgan Stanley board member
Erskine Bowles, have both explicitly advocated cuts to
Social Security and raising the retirement age. If they
can get the commission to support their agenda, then
they will rely on President Obama and the Congressional
leadership to do the necessary arm-twisting to gets
Congress to approve the cuts to Social Security.

This would be about as old style as politics could ever
get. We have an election next month. The point of
elections is let the public decide on issues like
whether or not we should cut Social Security benefits
or raise the retirement age.

If President Obama believed in "new politics" then he
would encourage members to say where they stand on
cutting Social Security benefits. Then voters would be
given the opportunity to set the country's agenda, not
a bunch of political hacks and Wall Street cronies who
were too incompetent to see the $8 trillion housing
bubble that wrecked the economy.

Of course, the public does not have to wait for
President Obama to pass judgment. There is a pledge to
protect Social Security that has already been endorsed
by more then 100 members of Congress. The pledge is
very simple. It commits members of Congress, or
candidates, to oppose cutting Social Security benefits
or raising the retirement age. It doesn't get any
simpler than this - even a member of Congress can
understand it. The full text is available at the
Campaign for America Future's web site.

http://www.ourfuture.org/handsoffsocialsecurity

Given the simplicity of this statement, it is
reasonable to assume that any member of Congress or
candidate who does not sign on supports cutting Social
Security benefits. There really is no other plausible
conclusion.

This is just like if someone accuses you of killing
your spouse. Any normal nonmurderer would immediately
deny the accusation and express outrage at the accuser.
In the same way, if members of Congress or candidates
find themselves unable to sign a pledge saying that
they will not support cuts to Social Security, then we
should assume that they do support cuts. Voters can
then go to the polls knowing that the person wanting
their vote wants to cut Social Security.

If we didn't have such a separation between the people
who make policy and the people who suffer the
consequences, then there is no way anyone would be
considering cuts to Social Security right now. All
projections show that the program is completely solvent
long into the future. The program does exactly what it
is supposed to do - it provides a core retirement
income to people who have spent their life working.

Social Security is also extremely well run and
efficient. We know this because its opponents highlight
incidents of fraud that are trivial relative to the
size of the program. For example, The Washington Post
recently ran a major story calling attention to
inappropriate payments to federal employees that
amounted to less than 0.005 percent of the program's
spending. Opponents of Social Security wouldn't
highlight such trivial errors if they had serious
abuses to tout.

The administrative costs of Social Security are less
then one-twentieth the cost of private insurers. That
is because it has no shareholders getting dividends and
no executives drawing eight and nine figure paychecks.

And thanks to the ineptitude of the folks running
economic policy, the huge baby boom cohort that is
about to retire is in desperate need of Social
Security. The Wall Street crew and their friends in
Washington managed to destroy their home equity and
their 401(k)s.

But former Senator Simpson, who is also the son of a
senator, has his pension and inheritance to live on.
Bowles gets $430,000 a year from Morgan Stanley, the
bailed out investment bank, to attend a few meetings a
year. These are the people who want to cut our Social
Security. And they are betting that their similarly
situated friends in Congress will go along

_____________________________________________

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