Posted on 02/24/2005 11:17:05 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA NY—Newly elected Democratic National Commitee Chair Howard Dean, speaking at a Cornell University rally Wednesday (February 23), admitted that social security faced “problems” if not reformed, contradicting the claims of many in his own party.
According to the Cornell Daily Sun, which covered the event locally, “Dean pointed out that…if Social Security were left alone for 30 years, its benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now. He acknowledged that… there were indeed problems with the program.”
The article also indicates that Dean also attacked the notion of many that social security was a “pension” for the middle class: “ ’[Social Security] was a response toward [overcoming] abject poverty...it is not meant as a retirement program...it was meant as a social safety net for people who had reached the end of their working careers and did not deserve, after a long lifetime of dignified work, to live in poverty,'" the paper quotes Dean as saying. "'It's not supposed to be a pension.’ "
While Dean did not endorse President Bush’s call for privatization, his views still put him at odds with many of his fellow democrats, some of whom have actually accused the President of lying about the need to reform to social security.
For example, Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy recently accused President Bush of playing “the politics of fear” with social security.
Similarly, a number of the liberal blogs, a medium Dean himself helped pioneer as a campaign tool, accused the President of “crisis rhetoric” and "a deliberate distortion (read: lie) in an attempt to mislead the American public."
It is unknown whether Dean’s acknowledgement of the “problems” with social security will have any effect on the direction of his party. In fact, while the Cornell Sun indicated that social security issues were a major point in Dean’s speech, other papers, such as the Ithaca Journal and Syracuse Post Standard, did not even cover his comments on the issue, preferring to focus on Dean’s appeal to the “youth vote.”
This is the part where liberals come out of the woodwork to explain that the party chairman does not set policy, he is just there to raise money.
This sure isn't going to make Hillary happy.................
Dean picked up the wrong SS playbook dated 1999.
ping
Yup, I'll be listening for that line in the news...
WOO HOO bump!!
Dean's got a mouth that keeps on giving and giving.
what do you know, a democrat who actually is telling the truth about SS...
A) It's broken
B) It has become a pension system which was never it's intention
I think Dean is a robot controlled by Karl Rove..
LOL!
We do all know Karl engineered Dean's ascension, right?
It's dishonest for any political party to say that SS is not in crisis or bordering on a crisis, when that's been the rallying cry for SS to either fix it, or keep it solvent or relevant, for as long as I've been alive. Sooner rather than later, something is going to have to be done about the problem. There is no sense waiting until the last moment.
Trouble for Social Security if something is done!
DUers are going to have heart attacks! Send out the Oxygen!
That's a given, but if we pass the acknowledgment it needs to be fixed we have the upper hand. Tax hikes or tax cuts. Which will be more popular in national debate?
Disagree. Anyone in the Democrat party, who isn't saying what Clinton said in 1999, while at the same time, blasting what Bush has said in 2005, is a friggen hypocrite.
You mean the "Ithaca loves Dean" puff piece? Yeah.
Just as the IJ "buried" the news of Hinchey's moonbat conspiracy rant until the blogs found out about it, it buried Dean's admission about Soc. Sec.
Those people are scum.
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