Atrios on the subject of Social Security

One camp includes people like me who think the system is financially sound and it isn't a pressing problem. More than that, no matter how fiscally sound it's made to be long run, conservatives and the Right won't stop trying to destroy it. Then there are the group of people who believe the system is something to worry about, at least a bit, and that the way to end the Social Security debate forever and destroy prevailing "IT'S DOOOMED" Beltway conventional wisdom is to put enough more money into the system so that's 100% sound 4evah. Read more…

Let's look at one of Obama's main advisers...the one who supports Social Security "reform" that destroys the current system...

"Obama's Economic Brain Trust Breaks With `Status Quo' (Update1)

By Rich Miller and Matthew Benjamin
Bloomberg.com
May 10, 2007

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2...

...Three academics -- Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times, Jeffrey Liebman, 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist -- form the core of Obama's economic team.... Read more…

Stroll Home, Barack Obama
(sung to Lynyrd Skynryd's "Sweet Home Alabama"*)

Big ideals keep him burning
Social Security Republican
Bringing hope throughout the nation
With his style and his grin
Where the heck have you been, huh?

Well I heard Krugman’s a doubter
Well, I heard he wears a frown
Well, I hope that New York Jew remembers
Obama’s fans don’t need him anyhow

Stroll home, Barack Obama
Goodbye Florida/Michigan
Stroll home, Barack Obama
Lord, I’m on my knees for you Read more…

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 more…

This is what the Gray Lord has been trying to get across: there is no "crisis" in Social Security, and trying to fix what ain't broke does not often go well. As it happens this comes from a commenter:

Just say: it's not a Social Security problem, it's an income tax problem. It's a tax-cuts-for-the-rich problem.

The problem is not, and has never been, with Social Security. The problem is that Social Security has been used to pay for a generation of tax cuts for the rich. And rather than pay that money back by setting the income tax rate for the rich back where it should have been, Americans are being asked to keep those tax cuts for the rich in place forever and ever.

It's not a Social Security problem. It's a problem of the rich who used the Social Security surplus as a way to lower their taxes. Now that the surplus is going to be used for the baby boomers, the focus should be on the artificially low top bracket tax rates, not on the payroll tax or Social Security benefits. It's the great shell game, now going strong since 1983.

Some of the loons are not loons, of course, just nervous and ill-informed people Read more…

The next attack on the Social Security Trust fund is far more likely than the last one to succeed. Read more…

Via the essential Avedon, this buried item from WaPo:

Leaders of the Senate Budget Committee want to assemble a Bipartisan panel of lawmakers and administration officials to deal with the skyrocketing costs of Social Security and other entitlement programs, with the goal of bringing a reform proposal to a vote in Congress later this year.

Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he and his predecessor, Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), have asked House and Senate leaders to consider appointing the panel, which would be composed of an equal number of Republican and Democratic lawmakers. They said they have also asked the White House to participate.

Conrad declined to provide many details of the panel, saying too much information could "kill this baby in the crib."

Please, strangle this baby now! And way to connect with the base, Kent!

Say it with me: Read more…

What a surprise. Via The Amazing Froomkin, this:

Nominations Sent to the Senate
Andrew G. Biggs, of New York, to be Deputy Commissioner of Social Security for the remainder of the term expiring January 19, 2007, vice James B. Lockhart III.

Andrew G. Biggs, of New York, to be Deputy Commissioner of Social Security for a term expiring January 19, 2013.
(Reappointment)

Andrew Biggs is from the Cato Institute, and is a Social Security privatizer: Read more…