If Rick Perry isn’t going to back off his claim that Social Security is unconstitutional, I have to wonder if any of the other candidates have the balls to aggressively defend Social Security and point out what a liability it will be next year to have a candidate who won’t preserve and defend the program. Perry’s position is incredibly unpopular. It would be far harder to overcome than any position I can even imagine a Democratic taking. I don’t even think running on a strong gun control platform would be nearly as debilitating as running against Social Security. What do you think?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Steve M. thinks it’s how they’re going to reach young people:
I mean, it’s true. When I was a very young all I’ve heard is that “SS won’t be there for me.” In fact, I’d say this is what I thought as late as 2004. They’ve dominated on that front to make cutting it easier, and when they already have the old vote secured…shrug
Disagree. Attacking SS and Medicare unsecures the older, more reliable vote.
Your comment illustrates an increasingly unfounded presumption that the vote count will be honest. See this important “open letter to the media” from Jonathan Simon of Election Defense Alliance:
Read the whole thing at http://electiondefensealliance.org/open_letter_media. There is much more detail there.
And that’s my answer, btw, to Booman’s question. I don’t think it’s a winning or losing proposition. I don’t think it will matter. It only takes a very few votes in a few key places (one, in small races) to swing a race from a Republican to a Democrat.
So the game isn’t about winning. This is about laying down a false “mandate” in advance. If he wins, he’ll say he won based on this stance, and that he’s therefore justified in destroying social security. So even if Republicans hold their nose and vote for him and Democrats either don’t show or have their votes overturned by a programming “glitch,” he’ll still claim mandate. THAT is what this is about. If he loses, well, he loses. But if he wins, this is his excuse.
In 1979 (32 years ago) I was attending an Econ class in high school and our teacher asked us if social security would be there for us. Almost everyone voted that it would not be. He laughed and said of course it would.
But do understand the propoganda assault on social security has been going on for a very, very long time.
As far as the young people go – remember they went almost 2/3rds for Obama in 2008. Now they have shifted dramatically toward the Republicans – in fact whites under 30 now favor the GOP.
What happened? It’s called MASSIVE FAILURE BY OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS. Sorry Boo, et cal, but you can use the Lily Ledbetter defense to fool yourself that Obama is the Greatest Progressive President Ever ™ – but it’s not the Professional Left’s ™ fault that Obama has lost all the 2008 newcomers to the Democratic Party.
Oh I know it’s been going on for a long long time, I just didn’t know that it’s been ingrained in young people’s heads that it wouldn’t be there for this long.
I’m still not convinced young people will support Republicans in 2012. Here’s what’s important to us and most people I know:
1.) The environment and climate change.
2.) Gay equality
3.) Ending the wars
I guess you could add the economy, but that’s a given.
with all due respect, the issue of whether or not ss, medicare, etal,will be there in some undefined future isn’t really germane to the issue. it’s really just more fear-mongering and misdirection at the current time to generate controversy.
granted, it’s their ultimate goal to eliminate the entire safety net apparatus and obama’s putting those same safety net issues on the table as part of his grand bargain strengthened their position significantly.
l think what greencaboose is referring to is a rising sense…of resentfulness…ennui…?… among the young voters that their involvement in the 08 elections relative to the issues they felt were strongly about… vis-à-vis your list:
haven’t faired all that well under the hope and change administration they thought they were voting for. ergo, there’s a great deal of apathy, or worse…cynicism…among that important demographic, so much so that they may well sit out the 2012 race strictly on the basis that they feel, and not without reason, that their vote really isn’t going to change anything. unfortunately for the rest of us, the young republicans and various lunatic fringe groups will be out in force.
team obamas’s got their work cut out for them convincing the youth vote, as well as the progressives and the disheartened base, that he is deserving of a second chance. frankly, as much as l dislike having to say it, l don’t think he’s up to the task.
welcome to the decline of the american empire. we shall see how well and truly fucked we are in due course.
I’m sorry, but on the issue of gay equality/rights, Obama has delivered:
If anyone complains about Obama’s performance on gay issues, they need to be set straight. I’m really getting impatient with the ingratitude I see from so many groups on the left. It’s one thing to be mad about something the president did or didn’t do, but to pretend he didn’t do pretty much everything asked from him on this topic is outrageous.
tell it
Damn straight.
He’s performed somewhere between “below-average” and “poor” on the economy, foreign military policy, civil rights, and the environment. But he’s been good on gay rights.
Amen. Enough with the whining about what he hasn’t done. What about what he HAS done?
He has the worst PR team of any modern president. But he is not the worst of any modern president, by far.
I don’t buy those numbers about youth shifting GOP. The white population may be shifting that way (purely for racial reasons, I think) but the younger generation is far less white than its predecessors.
Polling shift link?
It’s an AP poll – take with grain of salt. Check yahoo.com.
It’s also very early, for the general public. Right now, all the attention is on the Republicans and their program because they don’t have a nominee yet. Once they do, the Dems will get a much larger share of the noise. And the poll numbers will swing accordingly. People are sheep. They are easily misled. But they are easily led again, too.
voting patterns among those under thirty are decidedly left in every survey or exit poll I’ve seen for years. The main problem is getting the youth out to actually vote, but they don’t seem to have a lot of sympathy for the GOP when they do.
In addition, anyone between 30 and 50 is probably going through the aging parent scenario, as I am – and we all see how social security keeps our parents from being totally dependent on us. I save drastically more money from my parents getting social security than I pay into it. Not even close.
Ok, if this is politically potent would the Democrats benefit by pursuing some sort of reform where SS faces a small percentage of cuts in return for the perception that the program is now on solid footing?
Raising the retirement age by one or two years seems to be a common, but not very good, solution.
If you could get that perception then it might be worth the trade off, but I don’t think you can. The “social security is broke” meme is a myth pushed very hard by the right wing wurlitzer — and tweaking it to “fix” it isn’t like to get them to stop lying about it.
A few points worth noting. First, please remember that Bill Clinton, for all his weaknesses, knew Social Security was the Democratic Party family jewels. In his first SOTU after the government achieved a budget surplus his theme – which he stated about 50 times during the speech, was “Save Social Security First”.
Al Gore, too, for all his campaign problems also knew this key point. Remember that when SNL made fun of Gore it was mostly about his continued reference to “putting Social Security in a lockbox”. Alas, he didn’t hit the point home hard enough.
Even Walter Mondale, in his otherwise extremely weak campaign against Reagan (admittedly the economic situation gave him no chance) did get in one really good jab that people remembered. In the debate Reagan repeated his line from 1980, “There you go again”. Mondale’s response: “Mr. Reagan, do you remember what you were responding to when you said that in the 1980 debate? You were responding to Jimmy Carter’s accusation that you were going to cut social security. You said ‘There you go again” and denied it. But YOU DID CUT IT, MR REAGAN. YOU DID.”
Even Barak Obama the candidate seemed to get this. He commented that if Social Security needed saving the way to do it was to raise the limit on the payroll tax.
Unfortunately, Barak Obama the President seems to have forgotten his campaign comments on this topic, as he has on so, so many other topics. He now seems ready to cut COLA increases, raise the retirement age, and even add extremely expensive and likely cost ineffective means testing — anything but actually doing what he suggested in the campaign.
Sigh.
It was Medicare, not Social Security.
Also ironically, this was in response to Reagan saying that he was “not going to increase taxes.” Tax Reform Act of 1986: The top tax rate was lowered from 50% to 28% while the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15%.
There you go lying again, Mr. Reagan.
But granny is taking care of a lot of grandkids so does the younger generation want to take care of granny? And when I was a 20 something I remember people saying Social Security wouldn’t be there for us. I’m now 70 and guess what I live on?
Same goes for the GOP’s Great Brown Hope, Marco Rubio of Florida. Entitlements like Medicare and SS make us weak – good luck with that line, brother.
Perry seems convinced that the Koch money can guarantee that each tbagger’s vote will count as 10. Either that or his handlers haven’t handed him a cliff note copy of latest polling nearly dropping tparty off the radar. Either way with Perry is believable.
keep getting him ON TAPE.
that’s all I care.
we didn’t get the GOP on record for voting to end Social Security in this Congress, except for a handful of folks.
but, if the GOP NOMINEE calls it unconstitutional, we won’t have to have the vote.
Every GOP Candidate will either have to stand with him, calling it unconstitutional, or spend time, bending over backwards trying to say that they aren’t with Perry.
this, coupled with their votes for Vouchercare..
the ads fucking write themselves.
I’m waiting for (yet another) photo of shitkicker perry posing with his six guns or giving us the “two thumbs up.” What a baboon.
If younger people vote a republican in so they can dismantle Social Security and not have FICA deducted from their paychecks, they’re in for a rude surprise.
If the repugs get rid of Social Security they are just going to rename the FICA withholding as something else and continue to collect it. Since Ronnie Raygun the Feds have been collecting FICA but channeling it into general funds (spending it) so they could lower taxes on the rich while increasing spending and waging endless war. Now they’re completely dependent on FICA and can’t stop collecting it without precipitating a budget disaster.
Let’s have some clarity about Social Security and the general fund.
Social security always has purchased Federal debt. The obligations of the general fund are the same as obligations of the general fund for any government debt backed by “the good faith and credit of the US government.” That “good faith and credit” is enshrined in the 14th amendment.
FICA still is channeled into the Social Security Trust Fund.
What has happened is that the federal budget now includes the total for all trust funds. And the surpluses (required for a workable Social Security program) going into the Social Security Trust Fund balances against debts elsewhere, especially the general fund, in calculating the deficit.
No one noticed this until Bill Clinton reduced the deficit to the point that this surplus (larger that in the past primarily because of the funds added to offset the Boomer generation) turned a slight deficit into a surplus. That surplus meant that general fund debt could be paid down.
What Republicans are doing is wanting to violate the 14th Amendment by renouncing the Social Security Trust Fund debt as a way to reduce taxes on corporations and the wealthy. And they figure that their Supreme Court will refuse to hear a class action suit from present or future Social Security recipients.
If the system continues to operate the way it is right now, the folks who think they’ve already lost that money might be surprised that there’s still money there in 2037. And if the economy ever improves and if younger people can shake unemployment, the Social Security Trust Fund is likely to be sounder than at any time in its history.
Who has been peddling this idea of Social Security not being there is 401(k) sales people and they do it every year at the mandatory “enrollment” meeting of most employers who have 401(k) plans.
Last year at our company-wide benefit meeting, when the 401K rep was giving her spiel about the plan, her sales pitch explicitly stated that “Social Security is not going to be there for most of you in this room”. Ergo, you MUST put as much away with them as possible.
I wanted to scream……
That is the point at which I walked out of a sales meeting shortly before I retired (on Social Security and a very wee 401(k) due to three years unemployment during the IT bust). It’s your 401(k) that is not likely to be there because you had to cash it out to live on in extended unemployment–and you had a 10% tax penalty for the privilege.
It’s time that employees started pushing back on this bullshit.
Damn! Only two years for me paisan’, but otherwise the same story. I got lucky and got a government job with the USPS. Now the PMG (a Bush appointee, funny how Obama keeps them forever) wants Congress to abolish Health Care benefits for the already retired and cancel all benefits for those who remain after his 30% layoff (see HR2309).
Darrel Issa is working hand in glove with him.
Should have known you were an IT guy. You’re always logical.
Always hated those meetings. All the garbage about how the stock market has gone up and up and up for lo this many decades. No, the Dow Jones and other averages have gone up and they haven’t monitored a static set of companies all those years.
My father got his doctorate in economics at MIT back in the late 1940s at the same time as George Schultz, former Secretary of State. Schultz’s father was head of the Dow Jones News Service and gave a presentation to the students one time. He said the DJNS correctly predicted the stock market movement 35-40% of the time. A student in the audience pointed out that you’re better off flipping a coin and Schultz’s father responded, “Yes, but at least we were right more often than any of the other stock news services.”
Rick Perry prays for rain, I pray he wins the GOP nomination.
If anyone can make Obama look like a populist defender of working class Americans, it’s Rick Perry.
Even people who are pessimistic about the long term viability of Social Security still want someone to try and fight to protect it.
OT, but if ya’ll have never watched BET before, they are right now airing the documentary that was filmed during FLOTUS and the weeMichelles in Africa last June.
I’m sure it’s gonna be re-broadcast if ya miss this one.
Such an epic slapdown/
Makes me wonder why the Times hires such lousy op ed writers.
So they can outcompete WaPo. 🙂