Response To Latest Social Security Attack: "Owe No You Don't!"

By Isaiah J. Poole
Campaign for America's Future
November 10, 2010
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010114510/response-latest-social-security-attack-owe-no-you-dont

The Chicken Little campaign orchestrated by billionaire
Peter G. Peterson to rally public support behind
cutting Social Security was kicked up a notch on
Tuesday with the launch of the $20 million "Owe No"
campaign. With references to "a growing crisis" that
will "threaten the livelihoods of Americans and our
standing in the world," Peterson hopes to build
consensus for policies that will persuade working-class
Americans into swallowing a permanent state of
austerity for themselves while the wealthiest grab even
more for themselves.

"Owe No You Don't" is the immediate response of the
Strengthen Social Security coalition, of which Campaign
for America's Future is a part. Its reaction to the
Peterson campaign:

    Mr. Peterson has the gall to lecture Americans on
    fiscal responsibility while refusing to support
    taxing Wall Street billionaires at even the same
    levels as the middle-class Americans whose
    retirement benefits he proposes to cut.

    ... This Wall Street billionaire thinks that the
    right way forward is to cut the already low Social
    Security benefits that people have earned during
    their whole working life. The fact that around 70%
    of all Americans, Republicans, Democrats, and even
    self-identified Tea Partiers oppose cutting Social
    Security benefits isn't going to slow this
    billionaire down.

    The first step to fiscal responsibility is everyone
    paying their fair share, not asking middle-class
    Americans with physically demanding jobs to work
    longer and undermining people's fragile retirement
    security cutting Social Security.

Though majorities of the American public have been
rather insistent in poll after poll after poll that it
does not support cuts in Social Security benefits-and
despite the strong case against such actions-Peterson
has succeeded in persuading a bipartisan group of
people to join his cause.

His campaign sets the drumbeat for the most imminent
threat to future Social Security beneficiaries, the
White House deficit commission. That group is due to
release at the end of the month a series of secretly
concocted, take-it-or-leave-it recommendations to
Congress that people with knowledge of the commission's
internal deliberations say will primarily consist of
raising the retirement age and curbing future cost-of-
living increases in benefits.

What will not be anywhere close to the menu of options
is perhaps the simplest solution to address what will
be a shortfall tin the Social Security trust fund about
25 years or so into the future: raising the $106,800
cap on taxable income for Social Security. That single
act would assure the solvency of the trust fund for
decades into the future.

The "Owe No You Don't" campaign will be supported by a
series of actions this month to counter the effort to
cut Social Security.

The first step is to sign the "Hands Off Social
Security" petition, which tells the White House deficit
commission that "we need to strengthen Social Security,
not cut it."

Next up is pushing back next week against an
endorsement of the Peterson agenda by a group headed by
Brookings Institution senior fellow Alice Rivlin. She
is already being used by mainstream media to give the
Peterson drive a bipartsan and cross-ideological gloss
and marginalize progressive calls for policies that
protect Social Security benefits.

Then watch for the Campaign for America's Future's own
"citizen's commission" report on how to address the
future of Social Security and the federal deficit. That
report will build on the themes of the "Don't Kill
Growth and Jobs" statement endorsed by hundreds of
economists and economic experts this summer. It will
offer sound alternatives for reducing the deficit,
protecting Social Security benefits and growing the
economy.

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate