Social Security

Ayn Rand fan boy Paul Ryan’s plan to destroy social security in order to ‘reform’ it

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EddieMunsterNo one despises the GOP’s alleged boy genius, Ayn Rand fan boy and failed vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI), more than I do. Not even Professor Paul Krugman, who has accurately portrayed Paul Ryan as The Flimflam Man.

Well, I take that back. Charles Pierce at Esquire does share my despise for Paul Ryan with an equal level of contempt. Paul Ryan’s Dubious Leadership: The Margin Of Finagle Revisited:

There are three things that have happened over the past few weeks that are connected, albeit with largely invisible tendrils of bullshit and cupidity. First, under the leadership of Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin and First Runner-Up in our most recent vice-presidential pageant, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, of which Ryan will be chairman of the House Ways And Means Committee, determined that, henceforth, a three-card monte technique called “dynamic scoring” would be employed by the CBO to judge the effect of what Ryan insists on calling “tax reform.” Dynamic scoring is a scam.

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Martha McSally’s first substantive vote in Congress sets up a fight over social security

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Congressman Ron Barber hammered Martha McSally with her previous statements on social security and Medicare during the campaign. Martha McSally swore up and down during the campaign that “I would never do anything to undermine social security,” really.

Yet her very first substantive vote in Congress, vote No. 6 on H.Res. 5 for House Rules Changes, passed 234-176 on a party-line vote, sets up election-year battle over Social Security’s finances in 2016:

McSallyBuried in new rules that will govern the House for the next two years is a provision that could force an explosive battle over Social Security’s finances on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.

Social Security’s disability program has been swamped by aging baby boomers, and unless Congress acts, the trust fund that supports it is projected to run dry in late 2016. At that point, the program will collect only enough payroll taxes to pay 81 percent of benefits, according to the trustees who oversee Social Security.

To shore up the disability program, Congress could redirect payroll taxes from Social Security’s much larger retirement fund — as it has done in the past.

[Reallocating revenue from the much larger Social Security retirement benefits fund to SSDI would cover the shortfall, and trust fund managers have performed such reallocations 11 times since the late 1950s.]

However, the House adopted a rule Tuesday blocking such a move, unless it is part of a larger plan to improve Social Security’s finances, by either cutting benefits or raising taxes [not going to happen in a GOP controlled Congress.]

Long the third rail of American politics, tinkering with Social Security has never been easy. Throw in election-year politics and finding votes in Congress to cut benefits or raise taxes could be especially difficult.

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No country for austerity pushing Democrats

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

deficit cutting

My biggest problem with centrist establishment Democrats has been their insistence on trying to prove they’re the bigger grown-ups in the room by embracing punitive conservative economic ideas and more successfully implementing them. Welfare reform was a perfect example of this. Democratic support for it, including President Clinton’s, was supposed to neutralize the issue for Democrats forever. Oddly, though, I never noticed the tendency of voters to associate Democrats with “welfare” to diminish. What happened was that the idea of “welfare” simply expanded to include any public assistance whatsoever, whether or not the recipient worked for wages, and then further to mean 47% of the country. People still defend welfare reform to me on the policy merits but no one can reasonably argue that it was a long-term political success for Democrats, unless they want to make the perverse case that Mitt Romney lost because at least half the country was offended that he thought they were on welfare.

President Obama embraced deficit reduction from the beginning of his presidency. And he did succeed in shrinking the deficit. Does he get any credit for it? Nope.

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Pima County Seniors Protest Martha McSally’s Attacks on Social Security

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Seniors Mark Social Security Anniversary, Protest McSally’s Support for Privatization Local seniors will gather this afternoon on the 79th anniversary of Social Security’s enactment to call on Martha McSally to stop attacking seniors’ retirement savings and start supporting this important program. McSally has repeatedly said she supports Republican efforts to undermine Social Security by trying … Read more

‘Silent Sally’ tells some whoppers to the Green Valley News

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Two-time loser CD 2 GOP congressional candidate Martha McSally, who has been avoiding taking questions from the media (except the friendly confines of FAUX News) and even questions from her CD 2 constituents, was afforded an opportunity to “write about whatever you want” by Green Valley News editor Dan Shearer in advance of the one and only CD 2 GOP primary debate in which she will appear with her primary opponents this coming Saturday.

Liar-LiarMcSally has earned a national reputation for her unwillingness to state her position on issues and to simply answer the damn question from reporters, hence the “Silent Sally” moniker we have been testing out at this blog.

But after the op-ed McSally submitted to the Green Valley News, it’s time to drop the pretense and just call her what she is: a shameless liar willing to say anything without regard for the facts.

Let’s take a look at the whoppers told by Martha McSally in her op-ed:

Whopper #1. Social Security is going bankrupt

“Green Valley’s seniors have paid into Social Security and Medicare and they deserve exactly what they were promised. That has always been my pledge to seniors. To accomplish this goal, we must find common ground to stop these programs from going bankrupt.

At our current pace, Social Security will go bankrupt in 20 years; Medicare may run out even sooner.”

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