Spooking seniors

Waterbury Republican-American ^ | Oct 24, 2004 | Editorial

[Graybeard58]

John Kerry is telling senior citizens President Bush will cut their Social Security benefits if he's re-elected. Selectively quoting a Congressional Budget Office report, Sen. Kerry said the president has endorsed "benefit cuts for seniors of between 25 percent and 45 percent. That's up to $500 less for food, for clothing, for the occasional gift for a grandchild."

Sen. Kerry knows that's a lie. But since he is, in the immortal words of Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, a leader of a party that has been "hijacked by a confederacy of gangsters who need to take power by whatever means and by whatever canards they can say," Sen. Kerry is not ashamed to stoop to scare tactics to try to tip the election in his favor.

The fact is no politician would be stupid enough to propose taking money away from the elderly. In 2001, a presidential commission developed three reform plans, each guaranteeing current recipients monthly checks that minimally would keep up with inflation. The president has said only that he favors letting younger workers put some of their Social Security taxes in private accounts.

Still, Sen. Kerry insists on lying. This is hardly a novel election-year ploy for Democrats. When his poll numbers fell in the waning days of the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore trotted out the Social Security lie, frightening enough seniors to win the popular vote.

"I will never privatize Social Security. I'll never cut the benefits and I won't raise the retirement age," said Sen. Kerry, who eight years ago advocated raising the retirement age and imposing means testing.

The biggest shame here is the program is on the verge of collapse and Sen. Kerry's lie is the only thing remotely resembling debate on the most important pocketbook issue of this generation. The 2004 report of Social Security's trustees conservatively pegs the program's unfunded liability at $10.4 trillion. Social Security will begin running a deficit by 2018. Under the rosiest forecasts, the program becomes insolvent no later than 2070. The General Accounting Office says Social Security did little to stop disabled Americans from illegally collected more than $1 billion in benefits in 2003 and nearly $3 billion in the last four years. On Tuesday, Social Security announced its 47 million retirees and 5 million disabled beneficiaries will get a cost-of-living adjustment of 2.7 percent next year, which moves the program inexorably closer to insolvency. More than half of next year's increase will be consumed by higher Medicare premiums, another entitlement set to implode.

The government would need $10.4 trillion in the bank today to keep the program solvent forever. According to an analysis by the National Center for Policy Analysis, President Bush's modest plan for personal retirement accounts would eliminate the need for payroll-tax increases and benefit cuts, provide Americans with better pension payouts and substantially reduce future Social Security obligations. That would require an initial infusion of $3 trillion over the next several decades, but would save about $11 trillion and set the program on a path to fiscal sustainability, the center said.

Faced with this fiscal calamity, the best the Democrat who would be president offers are lies and hollow promises about never cutting benefits, raising payroll taxes or increasing the retirement age -- the only options left if privatization is off the table.

And the best the advocates for the Greatest Generation, the people who control most of the wealth in this country, can do is whine about the 2.7 percent COLA and how Medicare doesn't provide free prescription drugs. It's bad enough these programs have eroded the founding principles of self-reliance and rugged individualism. Now, the ones who failed to plan sufficiently for their retirements gripe when the retirement lunch their government is paying for with a Ponzi scheme isn't free.

[Graybeard58]

the ones who failed to plan sufficiently for their retirements gripe when the retirement lunch their government is paying for with a Ponzi scheme isn't free.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

[Question Liberal Authority]

"hijacked by a confederacy of gangsters who need to take power by whatever means and by whatever canards they can say,"

And that's what John Kerry's FRIENDS say about him.

[ceoinva]

Art Linkletter and Seniors are blowing the whistle on this type of scare mongering. Check out at usanext.org

[Flashman_at_the_charge]

Remember the DNC ad in 2002 with Bush pushing a wheelchair bound senior over a cliff.
http://www.democrats.org/social_insecurity/