Social Security Agency Is Enlisted to Push Its Own Revision
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: January 16, 2005
ASHINGTON, Jan. 15 - Over the objections of many of its own employees, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort to publicize the financial problems of Social Security and to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution.
The agency's plans are set forth in internal documents, including a "tactical plan" for communications and marketing of the idea that Social Security faces dire financial problems requiring immediate action.
Social Security officials say the agency is carrying out its mission to educate the public, including more than 47 million beneficiaries, and to support President Bush's agenda.
Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/politics/16benefit.html?oref=login&th
Should the agency that administers the Social Security system be involved in the legislative process and be supporting a political agenda.
How else to mobilize a massive disinformation campaign to destroy the government's most popular program, au?
It's worked so well for them, after all...
It's "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (or whatever the hell they called it) all over again...
If this is what people want, fine, but if anyone thinks this effort is anything other than the revenge of the New Deal-era GOP, they're fooling themselves...
Just Wonders wrote:Why do they keep telling me SS is such a great deal and that I'm too stupid to manage my own money again?
Maybe becaussssse.... it is, and you are?
Just a thought.
Quote:"If you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now," he said Tuesday at a forum on Social Security. The stark choice of words was hardly a slip of the tongue - Bush used the word "bankrupt" five times in the 45-minute session.
He also warned of a potentially "bankrupt" system in a radio address last month, referring to demographic changes that signal a "looming danger."
"In the year 2018, for the first time ever, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than the government collects in payroll taxes," Bush said.
That is just plain wrong. In 14 of the past 47 years, including 1975 to 1983, Social Security paid out more in benefits than the government collected in payroll, with the gap reaching $10 billion in 1983. So the projected "crossover" point in 2018 is a relatively meaningless milestone, say opponents of Bush's privatization plans, even as they acknowledge the system faces long-term problems.
Bush's statements "appear designed to further a widespread perception, especially among younger people, that Social Security will entirely collapse and that there will be nothing for them when they retire," said Bob Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The White House press office did not return phone calls seeking an explanation.
Social Security, insolvency, and political spin
Does anyone just wonder if Bush is lying again to push an agenda?
I am sure you have heard the word fearmonger. there is no better example than Bush.
Who was it who said we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Hitler only used the big lie as his weapon. Bush has gone a step further useing the big lie and fear.
au1929 wrote:I am sure you have heard the word fearmonger. there is no better example than Bush.
I dunno. You seem to be doing a pretty good job yourself here. It pretty much sums up the argument to preserve SS as it is thusfar.
Fishin
Not I nor anyone else has said that the SS system does not need to be repaired, upgraded or in some way changed. What it does not need is to be crippled.
Again--the purpose of the Bush plan is to end SSI as we know it. Ultimately, to phase it out altogether.
If that's fear-mongering, then I suppose all dissent from the Bush/Rove/Nordquist runaway train must be considered that way. So be it!
OP-ED COLUMNIST
That Magic Moment
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: January 18, 2005
A charming man courts a woman, telling her that he's a wealthy independent businessman. Just after the wedding, however, she learns that he has been cooking the books, several employees have accused him of sexual harassment and his company is about to file for bankruptcy. She accuses him of deception. "The accountability moment is behind us," he replies.
Last week President Bush declared that the election was the "accountability moment" for the war in Iraq - the voters saw it his way, and that's that. But Mr. Bush didn't level with the voters during the campaign and doesn't deserve anyone's future trust.
I won't belabor the W.M.D. issue, except to point out that the Bush administration, without exactly lying, managed to keep most voters confused. According to a Pew poll, on the eve of the election the great majority of voters, of both parties, believed that the Bush administration had asserted that it found either W.M.D. or an active W.M.D. program in Iraq.
Mr. Bush also systematically misrepresented how the war was going. Remember last September when Ayad Allawi came to Washington? Mr. Allawi, acting as a de facto member of the Bush campaign - a former official close to the campaign suggested phrases and helped him rehearse his speech to Congress - declared that 14 or 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were "completely safe," and that the interim government had 100,000 trained troops. None of it was true.
Now that the election is over, we learn that the search for W.M.D. has been abandoned. Meanwhile, military officials have admitted that even as Mr. Bush kept asserting that we were making "good progress," the insurgency was growing in numbers and effectiveness, that the Army Reserve is "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force," and oh, by the way, we'll need to spend at least another $100 billion to pay for war expenses and replace damaged equipment. But the accountability moment, says Mr. Bush, is behind us.
Maybe we can't hold Mr. Bush directly to account for misleading the public about Iraq. But Mr. Bush still has a domestic agenda, for which the lessons of Iraq are totally relevant.
White House officials themselves concede - or maybe boast - that their plan to sell Social Security privatization is modeled on their selling of the Iraq war. In fact, the parallels are remarkably exact.
Everyone has noticed the use, once again, of crisis-mongering. Three years ago, the supposed threat from Saddam somehow became more important than catching the people who actually attacked America on 9/11. Today, the mild, possibly nonexistent long-run financial problems of Social Security have somehow become more important than dealing with the huge deficit we already have, which has nothing to do with Social Security.
But there's another parallel, which I haven't seen pointed out: the politicization of the agencies and the intimidation of the analysts. Bush loyalists begin frothing at the mouth when anyone points out that the White House pressured intelligence analysts to overstate the threat from Iraq, while neocons in the Pentagon pressured the military to understate the costs and risks of war. But that is what happened, and it's happening again.
Last week Andrew Biggs, the associate commissioner for retirement policy at the Social Security Administration, appeared with Mr. Bush at a campaign-style event to promote privatization. There was a time when it would have been considered inappropriate for a civil servant to play such a blatantly political role. But then there was a time when it would have been considered inappropriate to appoint a professional advocate like Mr. Biggs, the former assistant director of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Privatization, to such a position in the first place.
Sure enough, The New York Times reports that under Mr. Biggs's direction, employees of the Social Security Administration are being forced to disseminate dire warnings about the system's finances - warnings that the employees say are exaggerated.
Still, there are two reasons why the selling of Social Security privatization shouldn't be another slam dunk.
One is that we're not talking about secret intelligence; the media, if they do their job, can check out the numbers and see that they don't match what Mr. Bush is saying. (A good starting point is Roger Lowenstein's superb survey in The Times Magazine last Sunday.)
The other is that we've been here before. Fool me once ...
IMO, if the plan is good, it doesn't have to be "sold."
IE
White House Forces Social Security Administration to Mislead Public
January 18, 2005
The Social Security Administration is supposed to be a neutral institution focused on serving the American public and staying above partisan politics. Not any more. According to the New York Times, the Social Security Administration recently developed a new "tactical plan" to help the White House market its all-out campaign to convince Americans the system is in crisis. Internal documents show Social Security officials told employees to get the word out that "Social Security's long-term financing problems are serious and need to be addressed soon."
More
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=293903
So, I guess Clinton was "misleading the public" when he made these comments at Georgetown University?
Quote: either [Social Security] will go broke and you won't ever get [the benefits you are promised]. Or if we wait too long to fix it, the burden on society of taking care of [the baby boomers'] Social Security obligations will lower your income and lower your ability to take care of your children to a degree most of us who are your parents think would be horribly wrong and unfair to you and unfair to the future prospects of the United States."
Back to you, Messrs. Reid, Kennedy and Emanuel.
Source
Clinton, and Gore spoke of the SS problem in terms of the SS money coming in being placed in a general fund and being spent for things other than Social Security obligations. That, if you'll remember, was the purpose of the "lock box," which has still not been considered.
JustWonders
There is a difference between fix and cripple. The only thing that Bush is looking to fix are the profits of wall street and his wealthy supporters.
Au......it would be "voluntary". If, God willing, it ever comes to pass, I'll be one of the first "volunteers" LOL.
JW
Stop dreaming. Do you think they will have two systems one for those that contribute and another for those who do not choose to. With different payouts to each. It seems that not only are the democrats against Bush's proposed fix but many republicans are as well.
Again does it need to be fixed? Yes! Is Bush's plan the the path to fixing SS. No!
Will Bush's plan prevail? IMO, not as chance.
Save Social Security? Why should we do this? Yeah, it is a way to share out wealth...the riches pay the retirement of the rags... but is a very risky plan. When FDR decided to create SS, it was thought to be a temporary fix... Then other Democrats decided to make this fix permanent...It has worked properly for 40 yearsÂ…but nowadays there is little problem: I am NOW paying the CURRENT pensions, just as other millions of people. By the time I was old enough to get an allowance, there will be almost nobody to pay it. But I will have spent my life savings because I was told to do so by the Government. And then, I will not be able to claim... I will have died in a short while (just two terms, more or less) who cares about me? Can the Federal Government increase public spending? Does somebody realize how much will SS cost in 20 years? Here are some statistics: the sum of Pensions, Medicare and Medicaid will account for the 18% of US GDP by 2040. If the present system continues, it will mean bankruptcy for an entire generation of Americans.
The accrued deficit of Medicare Part A plus Medicare part B equals $ 30 trillion as of TODAY.
That's roughly 3 times today's GDP for the record.
