Progressive Opinion

The Right Message on Social Security

OurFuture.org Staff — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:12:47 -0400

Here's A Little Straight Talk, My Friends. John McCain Hates Social Security.

Bill Scher — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:29:54 -0400

Sen. John McCain, I'm one of your friends, right? The kind of friend who can handle some of your special brand of Straight Talk™.

So why won't you just tell me you hate Social Security?

Twice this week you lambasted the founding principle of Social Security, that, as you described, "we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today." In separate appearances, you called the way Social Security has been structured for more than 70 years an "absolute disgrace," and a "broken" system.

Twice! You even called that pronouncement "Straight Talk™." That's no slip of the tongue. You must mean it.

So why did you backtrack yesterday when asked about it from reporters? Instead of saying that you hate the founding principle of Social Security, you revised your remarks: "They are paying into a system that they won’t receive benefits from on the present track that it’s on – that’s the point."

That's not even Straight Talk™! As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explained after the last Social Security trustees report, "Social Security is structurally sound and does not require drastic changes."

While I thought we were friends, this sadly hasn't been the first time this year in which you didn't give me Straight Talk™ on Social Security.

You told the Wall Street Journal in March that you support President Bush's earlier proposal to partially privatize Social Securtiy, saying, "As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed." When the Journal pointed out your website said something different, you promised to change the website.

You still haven't! And do you know how hard it is to even find the two sentences describing your Social Security position on your website? It's not even mentioned under your "Issues" menu on the homepage. You just said "Americans have got to understand" what a "disgrace" the program is. How can they if your website won't tell them?!

Most importantly, why did you tell the Wall Street Journal that you support "private savings accounts?" Why bother with the Karl Rove/Frank Luntz poll-tested phrases? That's not Straight Talk™! Say what you really mean: "privatization!"
That's what you did in 2004.

After being asked if "privatizing Social Security [would] be a priority for you moving forward," you responded, "Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits."

Yet, last month, you pretended you never said that, telling voters at a town hall, "I'm not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be."

What is it about Social Security that makes you allergic to Straight Talk™? Are you worried about keeping one of your few leads in the polls, among seniors?

I'm sure if you told seniors that you hate Social Security, always have and always will, they'd understand.

Maybe they wouldn't vote for you, but at least you could still be friends.

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Sour Notes on Social Security

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:46:05 -0500

Like an “American Idol” reject, John McCain keeps warbling George W. Bush’s greatest flops.

The latest is Social Security privatization, a proposal so roundly rejected by the American people when Bush tried to foist it on the nation in 2005 that even a solidly Republican and sycophant Congress couldn’t swallow it.

But the Arizona Republican senator can’t let it go. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, McCain said that he would, if president, seek to implement “private savings accounts … along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

His words to the Journal are mirrored on his website, which says, “John McCain supports supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts — but not as a substitute for addressing benefit promises that cannot be kept.”

The ominous phrase after the “but” is not-so-thinly-veiled code for benefit cuts. Under McCain, you’ll have to work longer before you retire and get a smaller benefit when you do. Your check will be designed not to keep up with inflation, as Social Security does now, so that as you age, you will continue to fall behind as expenses rise.

Meanwhile, you will have to take some percentage of your money that would have gone into the Social Security trust fund and invest it in the stock market. You will have to navigate a dizzying array of options presented by brokers hungry to claim a slice of your personal account for their wallet. And then you will have to pray that you made a wise choice. If you didn’t, or if you ended up being taken to the cleaners in an Enron-style rip-off, well, tough.

This is the social insecurity that John McCain offers to senior citizens. And this man is not being laughed off the presidential stage?

As Roger Hickey, a co-director here at the Campaign for America’s Future and one of the leaders responsible for derailing the 2005 privatization scheme, put it:

Amazing! John McCain embraces the idea that made George W. Bush a lame duck! Clearly McCain learned nothing from George W. Bush's failed attempt to privatize Social Security. Over the past four years, Bush tried hard to achieve the holy grail of right-wing ideologues: dismantling our most important retirement system and putting part of people's contribution in the stock market. And the American people said NO, resoundingly. The fact that McCain is willing to campaign on this dangerous and elitist privatization proposition—even as the economy and stock market goes into a dive— shows that McCain is more concerned about right wing priorities (and Wall Street dreams) than with securing retirement security for the American people.

McCain wants to convince the public that he is going to take on a tough political challenge that no one else has been able to solve. If he was really all that politically macho, he would take the advice from a number of experts who have concluded that Social Security will remain solvent at current levels for at least another 40 years and will be solvent indefinitely through some relatively modest steps, such as simply raising the cap on the amount of earned income subject to Social Security taxes.

The problem is not that people don’t have private options for investing in their retirement—the millions of dollars worth of ads on television, print publications and the Internet hawking all manner of IRAs and 401(k)s testify to that—but it is that politicians have bought into one more Big Conservative Lie. The public saw through it in 2005 and said that the bedrock of our retirement should continue to rest on a platform of shared responsibility, not on a Wall Street gamble in which the house is the only assured winner. That same aware and mobilized public will deliver that same bit of “straight talk” that will sideswipe any bus that tries to take that privatization road again.

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