Today’s Boston Globe has a somewhat misleading article today about means testing Social Security. It states fairly explicitly that both candidates favor means testing, but that’s not borne out by the article. Obama, it states, prefers to raise taxes on the rich, which is not “means testing”. “Means testing” refers to restricting eligibility to a program to those deemed poor enough to need it.
It’s just one more Republican bait and switch:
The emphasis on means testing as a way to save entitlement programs is, in part, the result of a lack of other options. Tax increases are difficult to pass, blanket cuts in benefits are unpopular, and privatization efforts have sputtered.
In the previous two presidential campaigns, for example, Republicans focused mostly on the idea of using private accounts in Social Security and gave little notice to means testing. But the private account idea faded, partly as a result of the Great Recession, and the conservative Heritage Foundation recently endorsed means testing as part of a solution for saving Social Security.
“It makes perfect sense,” said Heritage’s David John, a Social Security specialist. “The idea is to put scarce resources where they are most needed and trim areas where they are not as essential. Means testing is a very simple, easy way to accomplish that.”
(via The Boston Globe)
As part of my continuing efforts to keep my readers informed, lets start with the facts. First, Social Security, as opposed to Medicare, is not in particularly bad financial straits. In about 20 years, if something is not done, benefits will have to be cut, but they will still be higher in real terms than they are now. In any event, there are easy ways to deal with the problem, including my favorite, which I would like to hope Obama is advocating, though I doubt it: raise the cap on the payroll tax. When present rates were computed, the rate-setters seriously underestimated the extent to which the incomes of the middle class would be shifted to the folks at the top. The bottom 99% simply isn’t making as much money as those folks in the long ago (1980s) expected. We should make the 1% pay on their entire income and the problem would be solved. It’s simply a lie to claim that resources are scarce when you’re talking about Social Security. There are relatively easy options, but talking about them in Washington is taboo, because they involve inconveniencing the privileged.
The other fact you should know is that means testing would save very little money unless you define the deserving so far down that only the near destitute need apply. Read the PDF you can download here.
Finally, since when did the idea of “private accounts” fade because of the Great Recession. It faded because when George Bush tried to implement it, an aroused Democratic base put a spine into most Democrats (the former Democrat Joseph Lieberman excepted); the idea went down in flames; and Bush had his ass handed to him.
But the Republicans, unlike the Democrats, take the long view. They don’t give in; they merely regroup, and re-message. They have been telling people for years that Social Security is going bankrupt, with very little pushback from the Democrats. A complicit media elite makes the job easier. Even the Globe reporter, presumably not a beltway person, doesn’t question the underlying assumption that Social Security is in desperate straits, with no “other options” than means testing.
Here’s the plan. Right now the Republicans tell you they want to “save” Social Security by putting “scarce resources where they are most needed”. As soon as they accomplish that they will do the standard Republican flip-flop and start stirring up resentment against those unlucky enough to still qualify for benefits. FDR understood that the program would retain political support precisely because it was for everyone. If you paid in, you get back. The Republicans aim to make it a welfare program, and as soon as they do, that’s what they’ll call it, and you won’t be hearing anything from Heritage about “scarce resources”. You’ll be hearing about—how does it go again?– people “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. ”
That’s the objective, and it may just work, even if Obama, the guy who says that he and Romney pretty much agree on Social Security, gets re-elected. The Democrats have inexplicably turned their back on a program that retains immense popular support, all in the hopes that they can curry favor from, and be deemed responsible by, the likes of Pete Peterson and the Washington Post.