Posted on 04/26/2005 1:43:46 PM PDT by Phantom Lord
RNC finds Bush-Reid tit-for-tat
The Republican National Committee (RNC) has resurrected a bill Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sponsored when he was in the House more than 20 years ago that would have kept members of Congress out of the Social Security program.
RNC researchers contend that the 1983 bill belies Reid’s repeated claim that Social Security is the “most successful program in the history of the world.”
The Republican salvo is in response to Democrats’ frequent use of a statement President Bush made in 1978 during his unsuccessful campaign for Congress that Social Security will “go bust in 10 years unless there are some changes.”
As the battle over Social Security reaches a fever pitch — complete with tens of millions of dollars spent by the opposing sides on television ads and the mobilization of thousands of volunteers to conduct grassroots campaigns — Bush and Reid have emerged as the principal adversaries, resembling candidates locked in a tight race.
Like a closely contested race, the fight over Social Security has spawned research unearthing long-forgotten statements and actions from the days when musical performers such as the Bee Gees and The Police reigned supreme.
In a statement scheduled for release today, the RNC blasts Reid for the 1983 bill. He sponsored it a few months after Congress passed legislation that required all members and other federal employees to join Social Security. Previously, federal employees, including lawmakers, participated in a generous defined-benefit pension program that exempted them from Social Security taxes.
That action may seem embarrassing when contrasted with Reid’s recent ebullient praise of Social Security, praise he reiterated yesterday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters.
“Senator Reid has asserted that Social Security is the ‘most successful program in the history of the world,’ yet he wrote legislation allowing himself and other members of Congress to stay out of Social Security,” said Brian Jones, the RNC’s communications director.
Reid’s bill would have kept all federal employees hired on or after Jan. 1, 1984, such as the president, elected officials, political appointees and judges, from participating in Social Security, according to a Republican summary of the bill, H.R. 3589, introduced in July 1983.
“One of outrages of allowing some people to be outside of Social Security is they’re not making contributions to the program,” said Gary Burtless, an economic-studies fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on Social Security.
“You are not contributing to benefits going to your parent,” Burtless said of people who do not participate in the pay-as-you-go program. “That [would have been] … one of the politically embarrassing things in 1983.”
Jim Manley, Reid’s communications director, said he was not familiar with his boss’s 1983 bill, probably because it was introduced more than two decades ago. But Democrats have not hesitated to use statements dating from even further in the past as political ammunition against Bush.
In an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” last month, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) used a Bush quote first reported 27 years ago by the Midland, Texas, Reporter-Telegram.
“This is a man, President Bush, who said in 1978 that Social Security would go bust in 1988 unless the system was privatized,” she said. “He was wrong then. This is the president whose White House said we’ve been waiting for this opportunity to change Social Security.”
During an appearance on CNBC last month, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) cited the same reference: “The president indicated in 1978 when he was running for Congress that he wanted to privatize not partially Social Security but all of Social Security.”
In response to those and other attacks, Republicans have responded with a pointed attack of their own on the tough-talking Reid, who is emerging as the leader of Democratic opposition to the Bush administration, particularly to Bush’s plans for reforming Social Security.
Reid described his relationship with Bush in personal terms during yesterday’s reporters’ breakfast, referring to him as “this guy” and describing meetings with Bush at the White House as lectures. He lamented that Bush takes up most of the meeting time discoursing on foreign affairs and leaving Democratic leaders little time to ask questions.
Republicans, too, have sharpened their focus on Reid, continuing a line of counterattack they sprung in early February when the RNC sent a mailing to nearly a million supporters criticizing Reid as an obstructionist at the start of his tenure as Democratic Senate leader.
Since then, Republican operatives have dubbed Reid “chief Democratic obstructionist,” just as they did his predecessor, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). They also have accused him of contradictions, in one case contrasting Reid’s claim that “there is no more positive agenda than saving Social Security” to one made two days later, when he said, “The so-called Social Security crisis exists in only one place: the minds of Republicans.”
Fat Teddy was one of 5 dims who opposed this way back then
for fear that his gubmint worker constituents would suffer
financial loss if forced into sosh security.
Fat Teddy told Clinton that if these people were forced into SS that the RATS would oppose his bill and it would go nowhere. And that was as recent as 1998!
You mean Fat Teddy was five of 10 dims, don't you?
You don't need this 1983 bill for that. The damn thing is going broke. The only way they prolonged the death last time was to up the tax, slap a tax on the tax and increase the retirement age. To say it is the most successful program in history is such a big lie it indicates the utter contempt they have for the public.
Wasn't Bush right? Of course, rather than privatizing it, in 1983 they changed the program to extend it by adding a lot of new workers to pay in who wouldn't get benefits for a while.
yes. wish I could find my source on that again.
I am one of the lucky ones, as I opted out of changing to the Federal Employees Retirement System, and stayed with Civil Service Retirement System.
I pay zip, zero, nada into social security, because I have my own personal retirement that I PAID for the past 30+ years.
In 1998, Reid stole his reelection. The republicans rolled over and refused to contest the election. Maybe they got what they deserved.
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