FDR

The favorite defense of Social Security by progressives harkens back to Franklin Roosevelt who famously said:

”I guess you’re right on the economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.”

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It's been nearly 35 years since we've had a “tax and spend” political party. During the 1970s, the Democrats gave up fighting the Republicans about the “tax and spend” label, and the Carter Administration tried to escape from that charge by making very serious attempts to balance the budget. During the 1980s, more and more Democrats emphasized their concern for reducing deficits and balancing budgets as a way of distinguishing themselves from the Reagan Administration's unprecedented peacetime deficits. Read below the fold...

Given the problems the United States has been having and the unnecessary, misplaced, and wrong-headed, but very real angst of people about becoming insolvent if we continue to increase the size of the deficit, I find myself wondering why we have not turned to another time-tested and very effective New Deal solution to the problem of growing employment. That solution is the Fair Labor Standards Act. Read below the fold...

The corporatist-centrist politicians, such as Judd Gregg, Kent Conrad, Evan Bayh, no longer afraid of a total collapse of the world economy, are using deadly innocent frauds, scare, myths, and lies about the deficit and the national debt to undermine the possibilities of progressive change in the United States. Read below the fold...

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Democratic Presidents have always had lower deficits except for Bill Clinton who produced a surplus

The stock market does better under Democrats

life is better under Democrats.

vote like your job depends upon it. Read below the fold...

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Image of Grandpa's FDR pipe by mjs

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But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life, is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1935 State of the Union Address.

Unfortunately, during the ensuing 72 years since that speech and the enactment of FDR's New Deal, Social Security has become a "Third Rail" in presidential politics. Candidates for the presidency from both parties continuously avoid stating specifics on the issue. Everyone has ideas but no one is willing to commit. While the candidates are eager to say what they are against (i.e. tax increases, decreasing benefits, increasing the retirement age), most fail or are afraid to state an affirmative plan. Thus the favorite phrase candidates use to avoid the Third Rail of Social Security has become: "everything is on the table."

Everything may be on the table, but it seems that few are willing to take a seat. Read below the fold...