The right has not given up on getting rid of Social Security (and Medicare)
Rep. Michelle Bachman wants Social Security and Medicare to go bye-bye.
In fact, the only thing that has changed in 80 years is that Republicans don’t hide it anymore. During the Bush II years, privatizing Social Security, which would funnel literally trillions of dollars into the open arms of Wall Street investment firms, was floated, and quickly killed, by the president and his allies in Congress. But those who thought the idea was dead have got another thing coming.
Rep. Paul Ryan, a star among the D.C. GOP, put out a proposed budget that shocked anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the rhetoric out of groups like Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, or indeed, pop culture types like Glenn Beck, over the last several years, in that it proposed doing away with Social Security and Medicare (and Medicaid) and replacing them with private investment accounts and insurance. (Ryan’s plan was so radical, his own caucus ran from it like it had the cooties, which of course, will likely cause Nancy Pelosi to make them vote on it.)
Despite the Washington Republicans’ trepidation over Ryan’s honesty, the truth is, the fact is lots of right wingers, along with Libertarians (including Ron Paul) and Libertarian tea partiers like Orlando talk radio host Phil Russo, who I interviewed for my Herald column last week, also would like to do away with Social Security. And their formula goes like this: “keep faith” with the senior citizens who are on Social Security now, or who are depending on it in the next few years (say, those over 60,) but cut it off for everyone else, and steer younger Americans into “private accounts” (meaning, Wall Street accounts.) The reason for the bifurcated approach is that old people vote — in fact, people over 60 vote more than anyone else, and even Republicans are not brazen enough to try these already peevish voters by taking away their safety net.
But just as the Bush boys were weaned on hatred for the New Deal, and as Ronald Reagan and other conservatives fought tooth and nail during the early 1960s to keep Medicare from becoming law, today’s conservatives have never really given up on the idea of getting rid of Social Security (and Medicare) as public programs, or even better,turning them into the latest super-profitable enterprise for the finance and insurance industries. (Wall Street has long salivated over the prospect of privatizing Social Security, despite the obvious risks of little old ladies winding up destitute as a result of a downturn like the one we just experienced.)
Enter Michelle Bachman, the kooky Congresswoman and darling of the tea parties and other right wingers, and darling of the Heritage Foundation, (perhaps because she can do the talking points in English, unlike Sarah Palin,) and who over the weekend, made it ever so plain. From ThinkProgress:
Speaking to a small group of conference attendees and ThinkProgress during lunch on Saturday, Bachmann outlined how the Republican Party and its 2012 nominee must address the national debt. Bachmann referenced Glenn Beck, who falsely warned about a $107 trillion in supposed “unfunded liabilities” from Social Security and Medicare. She then called for a “reorganization” of entitlements where people “already in the system” would continue to receive benefits, but “everybody else” would be weaned off:
BACHMANN: Is the country too big to fail? No, the country can fail. We can, we’re not invincible. And we’re so close now to being at that point because the thing is, as Glenn Beck said last night, it is true. The $107 trillion that he put on the board. We’re $14 trillion in debt, but that doesn’t include the unfunded massive liabilities. That’s $107 trillion, and that’s for Social Security and Medicare and all the rest. You add up all those unfunded net liabilities, and all the traps that could go wrong we’re on the hook for, and what it means is what we have to do is a reorganization of all of that, Social Security and all. We have to do it simply because we can’t let the contract remain as they are because the older people are going to lose. So, what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system, that don’t have any other options, we have to keep faith with them. But basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off. And wean everybody off because we have to take those unfunded net liabilities off our bank sheet, we can’t do it. So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.
Bachman is not alone, although she and Ryan are the most blatant about it (so is Beck, who has wept into the microphone on his radio show many times about how much more Christian and pure the country would be if people were “self-reliant,” rather than reliant on Social Security, Medicare and other forms of government dole, though you won’t hear him say that on Fox News.) Lots of politicians are on the record as favoring privatization. In Florida, home to the oldest population in the U.S., two of them — Marco Rubio and Bill McCollum — are running for major political offices, likely without their supporters having any idea what they’re up to. (There are rank and file wingers who also spout the same thing, a la Joe the (not) Plumber during the 2008 campaign, but most get stumped when called on the carpet as to whether they themselves will refuse to take their Social Security when they get old.) Dick Armey, the head of the tea party astroturf outfit Freedomworks, whose goal in life is to turn over as much of America to large corporations as he can before he dies, actually sued to try and keep his taxpayer-supported Cadillac healthcare plan instead of going on Medicare, and Armey and Newt Gingrich have both pushed for laws that would let senior opt out of Medicare altogether, without losing their Social Security benefits (the two are legally tied together.) When did they try that? Last year.
Reporters need to begin asking some questions about that (I emailed Rubio’s campaign last week and got a confirmation that he does indeed favor “private accounts” for Social Security.) Especially down here in the sunshine state.
Flashback: read “The trillion dollar hustle” by Thomas Frank, (Harper’s Magazine, 2002)
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[...] Michelle Bachman, who says Americans must be “weaned off” Social Security and Medicare“ [...]