Mods - published with permission:
Should Dems Pretend Social Security Is Broken?
By David Swanson
Should Democratic leaders who want to defeat Bush's plan to privatize Social
Security go along with the pretense that there are serious problems in
Social Security and focus on telling people that Bush's proposal would make
the problems worse? That's what some people are advising Democratic leaders
to do. They are also advising that the Dems should avoid proposing any plan
of their own to address the "problems." Doing so, they say, would allow the
Republicans to criticize the Democrats' plan.
Of course, if the Dems manage to block Bush's plan, the Republicans will be
able to say that the Democrats got in the way of reform while proposing no
ideas of their own. Meanwhile, the Democrats will be able to claim that
they saved a program that has serious problems -- and to secretly feel good
about the fact that it really doesn't.
That sure sounds to me like a recipe for strengthening the Democratic Party!
There are those who refer to the strategy of criticizing Bush's plan as
"Playing Offense, Not Defense." But, of course, Social Security was on no
progressive organization's agenda until Bush put it there.
Can anyone even imagine the Democratic leadership holding a press conference
on the topic of single-payer health care or free college tuition or a
department of peace? As crazy as such notions sound to those in-the-know,
laying so much as a finger on Social Security was considered crazier not too
long ago. The right wingers didn't take a poll, find out that people wanted
their Social Security left alone, and leave it alone. No, they talked
endlessly about how it's in a crisis and should be changed.
That's what political parties should do. They push their agenda forward.
They use polls to find out what they need to change, not just what they need
to adapt to. Pollsters generally find that responses change dramatically
after a few seconds of education during the phone call. But they do not
draw from this fact a general conclusion that a little more education could
change even more responses. They also do not look outside the current issue
to the long-term effects of asking a party to espouse an incoherent or
muddled position, of asking it to pass up opportunity after opportunity to
reveal the opposition's dishonesty, of asking it to aim for a narrow victory
on an issue where a broader view would immediately suggest the possibility
of a landslide, or of asking it not to loudly defend its greatest historical
successes, things like Social Security.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, no connection between
Iraq and 9-11, and no benefit to the economy from cutting millionaires'
taxes. And Social Security is doing fine. These people pay off
journalists. They routinely lie. This lie, like most of them, doesn't even
make sense: Social Security will be in trouble because the economy will
falter, but Wall Street investments will save it because the economy will
soar. Some of this stuff you can't even pretend to believe, no matter how
hard you try.
Our first talking point should be: "There is no crisis in Social Security."
We should then focus on the fact that here are several other crises (the
general budget, the war, health care, the minimum wage, the cost of housing,
crumbling schools, corrupt election financing, unverifiable voting machines,
an overly concentrated media, the right to organize, the right to vote, the
right to talk to a lawyer before they lock you away for good, etc.) And we
should propose solutions to these real crises, and we should fight for those
solutions for as long as it takes. Changing the subject to these topics is
playing offense. Changing the subject from the "crisis" of Social Security
to the flaws in Bush's plan is defense, and bad defense. Most people are
not so stupid as to not ask "Well, where's your plan?" Many of us know
this, just as we knew that voting for the war would not be good for
Democratic presidential candidates. Many of us are open to nothing more
than a claim that Bush is -- once again -- lying.
He is. In the words of respected economist Dean Baker: "Looking
historically, if one had accurate projections for the future, Social
Security would have appeared in much worse shape in the decade of the
fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, all decades in which the program
needed immediate tax increases. In short, if Social Security is facing a
'crisis' today, then it has faced a crisis for most of its seventy years of
existence."
The West Virginia AFL-CIO sent out an Email alert recently that hit the nail
on the head. Here's the full text:
"THERE IS NO SOCIAL SECURITY CRISIS!
"For generations, social security has provided families income they can rely
on when their breadwinners die, become disabled or retire.
"Now the people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary
budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons, are now trying to
dismantle Social Security. They want to replace Social Security's
guaranteed, lifetime, inflation-adjusted benefits with privatized individual
investment accounts.
"By law, Social Security has a budget independent of the rest of the U.S.
Government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an
increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security
has a large and growing trust fund.
"Those who claim that benefits will be jeopardized in 2019 are suggesting
that the Treasury securities held by the Trust Fund may not be honored. By
law, the federal government can borrow from the Social Security Trust Fund
by having the government sell treasury bonds to the Trust Fund. If we just
pay back Social Security for all Trust Fund Money diverted in the past as
required by current law, Social Security's benefits will be protected for
almost fifty years. This allows for the impact on the system of growing
numbers of retirees from the 'baby boomer' generation.
"There are only two things that could endanger Social Security's ability to
pay benefits before the Trust Fund runs out. One would be a fiscal crisis
that led the United States to default on all its debts; the other would be
legislation specifically repudiating the General Fund's debt to retirees.
"The long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts is five times the budget office's
estimate of Social Security's deficit over the next 75 years."
In fact, there is a crisis in the government budget, brought on by a bloated
Pentagon, an ongoing illegal war, and massive tax cuts for millionaires.
But this would be best addressed by cuts at the Pentagon, an end to the war,
and repeal of the tax cuts. Allowing the same people who've bankrupted the
rest of the government to turn Social Security money over to their friends
on Wall Street is a mistake many people will recognize if it's pointed out
to them.
And it's being pointed out to them already, and not just by the West
Virginia AFL-CIO. The AARP has a page on its website that begins:
"Fact 1: The Social Security trust funds are a sure thing. "Many people are under the impression that Social Security is broken, unable
to fulfill its promise to the people who have contributed to it over the
years. Well, the fact is, the Social Security trust funds aren't just sound,
they're building a surplus."
The Center for American Progress's website recently carried the headline
"White House Forces Social Security Administration to Mislead Public."
Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women says: "Social
Security is not in trouble. George Bush is in trouble," as quoted on the
website of the Campaign for America's Future.
In fact, it's not just activists who are willing to admit that Social
Security is not in trouble. Columns in the New York Times and an op-ed in
the Washington Post, among other media coverage, have accused Bush of
manufacturing a phony crisis for a program that is doing better than almost
any other.
A column in the Oregonian says: "The Congressional Budget Office now says
the program's extra revenue will cover all benefits though 2052 - and most
benefits after that. Surviving baby boomers will be in their 90s and 100s.
Generation Xers will be in their 70s and 80s..Isn't this odd? Other parts of
the federal government aren't fully funded through tomorrow, let alone for
another half-century. Yet President Bush has singled out Social Security as
the nation's biggest crisis."
An editorial in the Chattanooga Times Free Press says: "The Bush
administration is well within its political rights to push its plan to roll
back Social Security benefits and borrow trillions of dollars to partly
privatize Social Security accounts. But it has now been revealed that the
administration wrongly plans to bolster its controversial plan, long part of
the conservative domestic agenda, by using the Social Security
Administration's staff and taxpayer budget to spread propaganda about a
non-existent Social Security 'crisis' to sell the idea."
The media has already allowed the truth to squeeze in on this one without
much pushing for it.
That being said, it is still the case that most news articles and broadcast
coverage build in as an unargued assumption the pretense that Social
Security is facing a crisis, or soon will if nothing is done.
Our talking points get in if we fight for them. The Republicans' get built
in as unquestioned truth. We've got an uphill fight.
But muddying our message and toning it down won't help us, won't make the
producers like us better. The media likes nothing better than conflict.
Conflict sells. Call Bush a liar, as Senator Barbara Boxer recently called
Condoleeza Rice a liar, and more microphones will appear than get yanked
away.
David Swanson's website is
http://davidswanson.orgLink to this article:
http://www.davidswanson.org/columns/should.htm 
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