Posted on 02/01/2005 5:03:54 PM PST by RWR8189
"Hell no, we won't go" is the wrong liberal approach on Social Security reform.
The late Pat Moynihan used to joke when I asked him why liberals were so reluctant to consider changing Social Security so that it guaranteed wealth as well as income: "It's because they worry that wealth will turn Democrats into Republicans." Leaving aside that possible correlation, it will be a shame if liberal voices, values and ideas are not brought into the debate initiated by President Bush's Social Security reform proposal. To make certain the reforms are done correctly liberal thinking is urgently needed.
There is no doubt that Social Security and Medicare are two of liberalism's most enduring and popular triumphs. And there is no doubt that a vocal and influential minority remains true to its strong conservative belief that the Social Security Act of 1935 and the 1965 amendments to this act, which created Medicare and Medicaid, represent socialistic and dangerous interferences with the marketplace. However, liberals are wrong to fear that President Bush's proposal represents a threat to Social Security.
I sincerely hope they do not merely defend their proudest achievement. I hope they see that President Bush is giving them an opportunity to finally do something about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
First of all, fears that Social Security will be destroyed are exaggerated. Across all generations and within both major parties, Social Security and Medicare are seen as a vital part of American life. They represent a powerful intergenerational contract between younger Americans in the work force who agree to be taxed on behalf of older, eligible Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
"On the other hand, there are two problems with Social Security that are serious enough to be called a crisis. The first is that in eight years the income from a 12.4% payroll tax will be insufficient to pay the old age, survivor and disability benefits owed at that time. From that point on, Social Security will begin to redeem some of the hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasury bonds it has "accumulated in the trust fund" in order to issue monthly checks to beneficiaries."
Interesting.
I can never quite figure Bob Kerrey out. Anyhow, he'd certainly be a lot better face for the party then the jokers they have now.
I wonder if he'll run for President again in '08. It would seem that he'd be a strong candidate. How old is he?
That said, I hope he doesn't. He'd be a lot harder to beat then some of the other possible candidates.
We have great incentive to pull former Democratic Congressmen into the pro-reform camp on Social Security. Dem officeholders are nervous to buck their party's leadership; and even pro-reform congressmen like Evan Bayh and Max Baucus are shying away from supporting reform now. However, former congressmen like Kerrey and Charlie Stenholm should be enlisted; not just for an occasional press conference, but in an integral fashion in the pro-reform marketing campaign that will be waged all year. It will create the appearance of bipartisanship before the people, and it will create the conditions for Democrat officeholders to defect.
A simply outstanding idea, on so many different levels.
Zell Miller would certainly join this movement. As would Sam Nunn, probably. Plus, John Breaux led the commission that suggested private accounts as a reform measure.
Aside from Stenholm, the President could also probably even enlist Martin Frost -- a smart man, though a liberal, who also has some scores to settle with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean.
Kerrey (then from Nebraska - had been governer and was senator[?]) seemed to be a fairly reasonable person in the primaries, but was lost in the dust when the Clintons admitted to adultery on national tv. He has since shown number of strange liberal ideas (including pro-Sadaam bias), but I am convinced, he would have not been the national disaster that we had in the previous administration.
Denny Crane: "I want two things. First God and then Fox News."
Well, I don't think the democrats will listen to him.
I am still for appointing an independent accounting firm to go over the figures and report to the public exactly where the money is going in Social Security, what the revenues are, and how deep the crisis is. I think there are a lot of rank and file democrats who think this is just something the Republicans made up.
Letter to the Editor -- WSJ
Re: "Pride and Prejudice" by Bob Kerrey WSJ Op-Ed 2-1-05
Dear Sir--
Senator Kerrey says that Social Security is "an intergenerational contract between younger Americans in the work force who agree to be taxed on behalf of older, eligible Americans." Whoa. A contract? Agreed to be taxed? Those would be universal surprises to us younger Americans if you ran a poll.
Senator Kerrey is expressing another slice of the deeply grounded, well meaning philosophy of liberal Democratism: government defense of and succor for the victims in society. Older, eligible Americans are the 'victims' of age. Hence, they need to be defended and cared for by government. But government, per Senator Kerrey's intergenerational contract, in this case is younger Americans who are the obvious, biggest, visible, taxable group to provide the funds to do it. And it's all so unecessary. The median wage earner today could retire in 2045 with a $3.5-million portfolio in stocks based on average stock returns in a social-security setting over the past 89 years between 1910 and 2000.*
And the whole messy business of trying to model that which defies rational modeling--the efficient, least-cost, maximum-benefit program which will satisfy all workers' and retirees' needs and mental well being. There is the demographics of immigration, fertility rates, and life expectancy to be factored in as well as forecasting 40 to 80-year economic, personal and public income, and federal-government-expenditure growth rates. What about a couple of plague epidemics that wipe the preponderance of the young? Or the occasional application of weapons of mass destruction on population centers? Et cetera.
The solution is to establish this year individual, privately owned trust accounts under the auspices of government in a brand new program that accepts only today's young workers from the first day of their first job. Trying to mix the solution of a brand-new program in with the finances of the old won't work. The transition will take 40 to 60 years to complete. When it is done, and all the transitional government borrowing has been paid back, the workers/retirees ratio will be irrelevant. All Americans will own the personal funding of their own retirements, and their families will hold title to their assets after them.
'Copernicus'
[name and town]
One should remember that with Social Security, Medicare, Medicade, etc., the same government that made the Indian treaties is holding your money.
That's true, but the Marxist/Socialist/Commies promote these big government "programs" with the specific, diabolical INTENT of trapping their dupes into dependency on "the government" so that in order for them to get by at all, they are forced to vote to keep their "benefactors" in office in perpetuity.
Once people have already made life-decisions based on these government-promised "social" programs, we can't pull the rug out from under them.
These dependency programs have to be unwound slowly. The younger people will throw off the yoke of slavery to the Marxist Rats and get into the HABITS THAT PERTAIN TO FREEDOM (taking personal responsibility by rejecting moral relativism in favor of the moral absolutes that the Constitution is in place to guard).bttt
Moynihan's comment is right on. We need to make some bumber stickers...
Moynihan said -- "It's because 'Democrats' worry that wealth will turn Democrats into Republicans."
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