Defending Social Security sounds like yesterday's issue #&8212; the fight people won when they defeated George W. Bush's attempt to privatize the system in 2005. But the financial establishment has pushed it back on the table, claiming that the current crisis requires "responsible" leaders to take action. Will Obama take the bait? Surely not.
Conservatives are trying to resurrect an idea to radically change Social Security that has already been soundly rejected by the American people—privatization. A new series of Institute for America's Future reports finds that if privatization proponents succeed, 8.6 million senior citizens would lose a safety net that keeps them from falling into poverty.... read more »
A conservative assault on Social Security was turned back during President Bush’s second term. But we have a long way to go before all Americans can count on dignified rest after years of hard work.... read more »
We need to make it possible for all Americans to retire with dignity at the end of a lifetime of work. That means protecting Social Security and mandating corporations treat their employees the same as their executives when it comes to health and retirement benefits.
Prominent Republicans have come out publicly in past weeks stating that, given the chance in 2007, they will push Social Security privatization again. This includes...
Because Social Security is such an important part of the economic well-being of older Americans, the benefit cuts included in the president's privatization plan would increase senior poverty dramatically. A new generation of poor seniors would place unprecedented demands on already stretched state budgets — squeezing out funds for top state priorities. This would likely lead to higher state taxes to pay the price of providing these new poor seniors with the healthcare, nutrition and housing they can no longer afford themselves.read more »
The mandatory benefit cuts included in the President’s Social Security privatization proposal would hurt America’s rural communities more harshly than urban communities.read more »
We need to update our social contract for the real lives of working families in a brutal economy.read more »
Social Security is a tiny problem. Medicare is a terrible one, but the problem is not really Medicare; it's quickly rising health-care costs. Look more closely and the real problem isn't even health-care costs; it's a system that pushes up costs by rewarding inefficiency, causing unbelievable waste, pushing over-medication, providing inadequate prevention, over-using emergency rooms, and spending billions on advertising and marketing seeking to enroll healthy people and avoid sick ones.read more »
Wrong Way Riegels became a football legend when Roy Riegels, captain of the California football team in the 1929 Rose Bowl picked up a fumble and rumbled the wrong way down the field. He was prevented from scoring a touchdown for the opposing team only when one of his own players tackled him. Now we have the political equivalent: Wrong Way Steny Hoyer could become a political legend for going the wrong way on Social Security unless his own teammates tackle him.read more »
What happens when a blindly ideological outfit pretending to be non-ideological so it can gut Social Security and Medicare gets confronted on videotape? At the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour" Wednesday night in Boston, it's the outfit itself that gets the jolt.read more »
Apologies for a belated Weekend Watchdog post, as I'm back from a vacation and long flight delay. But as usual, on Sunday at 4 PM ET, tune in to Air America Radio's "Seder on Sundays" program, where I'll offer the Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up.
For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (ABC's This Week) and Sen. John McCain, R-AZ (Fox News Sunday): Time Magazine reported this week from Pakistan:
...as [Musharraf's] regime cracked down on lawyers, journalists and human-rights activists, it agreed to a cease-fire with a powerful militant leader who had taken 213 soldiers hostage in the lawless northwestern region. The irony was not lost on Asma Jahangir, Pakistan's best-known human-rights activist, who wrote in an e-mail from house arrest, "Those [Musharraf] has arrested are progressive, secular-minded people, while the terrorists are offered negotiations and cease-fires."
Yet, Condi Rice and President Bush have continued to describe Musharraf with kind words and have refused to take any substantive action in response to his dictatorial crackdown. And McCain has not criticized the White House for continuing to provide aid to Musharraf.
You claim your foreign policy is to defeat terrorism by promoting democracy. Isn't this further evidence that your actual foreign policy does neither? read more »
We were hoping to hear some tough questions asked of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain on the Sunday talk shows. read more »
Last night's State of the Union address revealed that the state of this president is still delusional. He can't level with the American people because he can't or won't recognize the reality that we face.
The best part of the speech wasn't anything the president said. It was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sitting over his shoulder, signaling the change that Americans voted for. The president also got a lift from the "ordinary heroes" that he recognized at the end of the speech. But when it got to substance, the president seemed bored with his own words as he trotted out his pledge for more of the same.
For this president, the economy is great and we need to stay the course. The Democratic response by Senator Jim Webb offered a glimpse of the reality that the president doesn't get - that this economy isn't working for most Americans. No wonder less than a third of Americans think the president has any clue about the problems they face.
For this president, we have a strategy for moving forward in Iraq, and we're garnering global support for our foreign policies. Maybe he's back on the sauce - he certainly isn't reading his briefing papers or listening to his own generals. The president called for bipartisanship, apparently not aware that Senators from both parties are already coming together - in bipartisan opposition to the president's escalation of the war in Iraq. Again, Webb offered a dose of reality in his response, stating flatly that it was time to bring the president's war to an end, and that if he couldn't understand that, "we will be showing him the way."
Even where it has dawned on the president that there is a problem to be addressed, his proposals are gestures, if not mockeries. The health care system is broken. The president's reforms, by his own exaggerated numbers, might provide health insurance for maybe 3 million of the 47 million that now go without, while taking a whack at workers who have decent plans (read unions) and public hospitals (read Hillary Clinton's New York which takes 40% of the hit).
Catastrophic climate change and our dependence on foreign oil are a clear and present threat to our security. The president recycles his ethanol enthusiasms (substituting "woodchips" for last year's "switch grass" as a potential source). But his plans won't even cover the projected increase in US oil demand for oil over the next decades. He still defaults on the imperative for a dramatic national drive for energy independence - like that called for by the Apollo Alliance, which can generate jobs even as it helps address global warming.
Our education system is not providing the basics - children with the nutrition and health care to be ready to learn, universal pre-school, smaller classes in the early grades, skilled teachers, affordable college and advanced training. The president offers only to continue the No Child Left Behind reforms that he has failed to fund.
Immigration reform is a vital necessity. The president calls for comprehensive reform, in the face of growing right-wing opposition. But he insists on a guest worker program, simply a subsidy for exploitative employers, insuring them a pool of second class workers.
The president's speech was more striking for what it omitted than for what it contained. No mention of our unsustainable trade deficits, the loss of 17% of our manufacturing jobs, the growing indebtedness to foreign creditors, particularly the Chinese and Japanese central bankers. No talk of the worst corporate crime wave in modern history, with executives cooking the books and plundering their own companies. Not a word about the worst inequality since the Gilded Age, the rise of families in poverty. Obscenely, the president said not a word about the beleaguered survivors of Katrina, who having weathered Katrina's winds, now must struggle to survive the administration's broken promises.
Speaker Pelosi's presence and Senator Webb's response offered the only solace for Americans watching last night. This president remains in his bubble, divorced from a reality he can't see, committed to a course at home and abroad that won't work. But it matters less and less. Americans have already tuned him out, and the Congress no longer dances to his fancies. From now on, it is the new leadership in Congress that "will be showing him the way."
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