Atlantic Free Press - Hard Truths for Hard Times - The Washington Post's War Against Social Security

Podcasts

Hot!

Recent

Search

About

Atlantic Free Press was launched in September 2006 by Dutch-Canadian R.G. Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands and American Expatriate Chris Floyd of Oxford, UK.

Brick Ogden, an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.

Assistant Editor Canadian Chris Cook hails from Victoria, British Columbia and Senior Writer Paul William Roberts is based in Toronto - but often on the road.

The mission of AF Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried public discourse today. AF Press provides a new venue for disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.

The Washington Post's War Against Social Security - Editorializing while reporting

Written by Seth Sandronsky

Sunday, 26 November 2006

By Seth Sandronsky

Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post reporter has a problem with Social Security.

She writes:

"the rising costs of Social Security and government health-care programs by offering to open talks with no preconditions."

They are on tap as subject for debate in future talks between the GOP and Democrats in Congress.

Medicare and Medicaid are at-risk financially. In brief, the reason for the financial fragility of Medicare and Medicaid is the affordability crisis of the U.S. health-care system.

Against this backdrop of the national health-care crisis, Social Security is the most successful insurance program going. The key to its success is the social pooling of risk. Social Security is not an investment.

Individual savings accounts are not insurance coverage. President George W. Bush has tried to partially privatize Social Security, proposing individual investment accounts for younger workers. They remain the rhetorical target as potential members of the president’s “ownership society.”

Now increasingly, these younger workers face being paid lower wages as new hires. Add their student fees for higher education that are rising with a grim constancy. The White House is well aware of the social conditions that this demographic is living, which can make it desperate and therefore at-risk to scare tactics.

One example is the oft-repeated claim that Social Security will be gone when young workers retire. Thus there is a need to change the program now. The go-to guy for such Social Security reform is Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

As the Bush presidency faces low polling numbers for its foreign and domestic policies, he needs political allies for yet another go at building support to reform Social Security. So we see an olive branch of sorts being extended to the Democratic-majority Congress to discuss Social Security.

The problem with the administration’s plan to privatize Social Security remains what it has been. The program’s finances are sound, on rock-solid ground for the next 40 years with no change at all, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reports.

Presumably, the Post reporter is ignorant of this fact. It is not arguable. Maybe that explains the editorializing in her reporting, combining the finances of Social Security with Medicare and Medicaid.

###

Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper www.bpmnews.org/. He can be reached at: bpmnews@nicetechnology.com.

Social Security - a Breakdown

Comments (1) add comment

Subscribe to this comment's feed

hewhoasks: Well, sure

Yes, talk with no preconditions: the Republicans (a few of them) can once again propose the "personal accounts."

Then tell them "no." Heck, even when the Republicans controlled Congress the proponents couldn't sneak personal accounts through: too many Republicans would not go along. With every Bush road show appearance the public support for the scheme went down. "Personal accounts" are an obvious bad idea. Period.

Or, instead of saying "no" just ask the proponents to show an analysis (not just wild claims and propaganda) that shows the personal accounts will even work. That should shut them up: an analysis won't show that. An analysis will show that "personal accounts" as the basis of a general retirement scheme are just a government-mandated, government-controlled bubble scheme.

We need a discussion. We need it to be demonstrated that "personal accounts" are not the way to provide general retirement security.

November 26, 2006

Write comment