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(photo: DonkeyHotey/flickr)
Yesterday, I wrote that all the crocodile tears that the Right Wing sheds for the supposed insolvency of Social Security are just a cover story for what they really want to do, i.e., destroy Social Security. My Tea Party opponent is a perfect example of this: he calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”; he calls Social Security and Medicare “robbery”; he calls them unconstitutional; and somehow we’re supposed to believe that he’s the one to save them.
So it has ever been. So it will ever be.
Germany introduced Social Security in 1889. It came to America “only” 46 years later, in 1935. When the Social Security program was introduced here, one of its most vociferous critics was former Republican President Herbert Hoover. Having led America into the Great Depression, Hoover wanted to make sure that no one led it out. (Does that ring a bell?)
According to an Associated Press report on May 6, 1935, and a New York Times report on May 22, 1938 (sorry, no NYT link), Hoover attacked Social Security in apocalyptic terms. Regarding the security for seniors that the program would provide, Hoover said that “we can find [the same economic stability] in our jails. The slaves had it [too].” Hoover said that programs like Social Security would put Americans in cages: “Our people are not ready to be turned into a national zoo.”
It’s odd that Sarah Palin hasn’t deployed the same metaphors. Yet.
Hoover said that rather than indulging in programs like Social Security, Americans should “cling to their family life, to their homes, to their individual self-respect, to their rights, to their individual liberties.” He urged that we must not shift “from the self-made man to the government-coddled man.”
I know that this sounds just like Paul Ryan, but it was Herbert Hoover. Really.
Hoover added that the way to achieve genuine “social security” was not through government handouts, but by “saving pennies and producing more.”
Yes, those pennies sure add up, don’t they? Save five of them, and you’ve got a nickel. Or, in Mitt Romney’s case, a quarter.
Hoover said that he believed in private charity, not government handouts. He predicted that government programs like Social Security would destroy private charity, “one of the most fundamental of inspirations in the spiritual growth of the family or individual.”
Now you know whom Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum got their ideas from.
With unemployment in America approaching 25%, Hoover said that social programs like Social Security simply weren’t needed to feed, house and clothe people. “We could do that by the simple methods of bread lines, barracks and dungarees.” The government could do nothing to ameliorate these problems; the only answer was “courage and vision in adversity.”
This sounds like something that Mitt Romney would say, right? Either that, or something equally vacuous.
Herbert Hoover led the Republican effort to strangle Social Security in its crib. And now, 77 years later, Republicans are trying to suffocate Social Security as it lies in bed.
At least they’re consistent.
When a right-wing Republican talks about how to “save” Social Security, I don’t know whether to laugh or (like John Boehner) cry. Republicans have as much interest in saving Social Security as they do in saving the whales. Or the rainforest. Or the Queen. Or the last dance. Meaning none.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
48 Comments
Alan, Will you make the promises listed here in your campaign? If you do, then you will win going away! And people will be much more ready to believe that only the Republicans are willing to gut SS, Medicare, and Medicaid, and not the Dems too.
LGID–
X2.
Blue
Thanks, Blue. I’ve contributed to Alan in the past. So perhaps he’ll check this out.
You need to stand up and have an adult conversation with Obama and the DNC about no cuts to SS; no upping the retirement age; no means testing; and no changing cost of livivng formaulas to hose retirees.
Tea partiers; Dems; GOPers and Indies all agree to the importance of making SS (and MEdicare) strong yet the GOP/Romney/Ryan wants to take a meat cleaver to both; Dems/Obama/Biden wants death by a thousand cuts. It is telling that Obama refuses to state no cuts to SS and yet he continues to beg for his “grand bargain” this is bad policy for all of us.
Going back into my memory, I was in California in the Late 70s. It was the beginning of the conservative push with Proposition 13, relief from property taxes. Afterwards, most states copied the law. The conservatives pushed on to the media a story about a little ole lady losing here home from property taxes. Everybody went to pass Proposition 13, so they could save the homes of little ole ladies. The results – schools lost funding, county services lost funding. Big corporations, like Lockheed-Martin got huge breaks on their property taxes, and they went right back at kicking little ole ladies out their homes for property taxes.
The moral is, Republican try to save what they want to destroy, and destroy what they want to destroy, basically, destroy people and the planet for faceless, valueless, and moralless, entities.
Mr. Grayson, have you noticed that the same arguments the GOP used in the 30s to fight the passage of Social Security are still being used today as the GOP inveighs against SS?
Since you are a student of American political history I’m sure it comes as no surprise that the GOP has been on the wrong side of every significant political issue for the past 90 years.
I agree with your comments on the matter of Proposition 13 – I was living in CA at the time too. However, there was a real problem with seniors on fixed income (Social Security) with many owning their homes outright. Property tax rate increases tied to inflationary interest rates resulted in bills that many could not affort to pay. You own the house but you can’t pay the taxes because Social Security was not increasing at the rate of tax increases. Some seniors were foced to sell their homes, often a place they had owned and lived in for decades. This happened to my Grandmother.
Proposition 13 was overkill and exploited by conservatives all over the place. It may have started with good intentions, my recollection of its origins (an outgrowth of a State Supreme Court decision on property taxes and school funding) and Jarvis and Gann’s role in its creation. I don’t know what the solution should have been, maybe increasing Social Security payments for a start, but something had to be done. So while I completely agree in principle with your assertion, the problem and its historical roots was more complicated than simply a conservative effort to strangle Government (which it evolved to).
Mr Grayson,
You do understand that your vote in favor of HCR, would lead down the path to the Privatization of Medicare, and on to Social Security.
Can you appreciate that your guy is still bad for Social Security?
Can you appreciate that your guy is also a lot like Hoover?
How can you write crap like this (with a straight face) when your own house is so completely corrupted and out of order?
x2
You are correct, but a small issue was used to pillage society in grand way. Maybe, there should have been property tax easements on retirees, and make up the difference with others, like corporations. After that, schools and other state programs were gutted.
I was there. Inflation didn’t help I’m sure, but the real problem was the soaring real estate market. Had a friend who took a promotion to Santa Barbara: We all cried for “Poor Ole Dean.” He’d sold a nice home in the Sacto Valley for a little over $20,000 and couldn’t find anything for under $40,000. We didn’t feel sorry anymore when we heard that he’d lived in for it two years and sold it for $140,000. Senior’s property taxes (tracking this run away train) quickly went thru the roof. School boards were rollin’ in dough.
And they sat right there and did nothing. They set the mil rate, they could have limited their income to something reasonable, but did not. Ergo Prop. 13.
Help me out here, Hack. HCR = Health Care Reform? If yes: I’ve been trying to figure out what PPACA will do to my Medicare for days, and I can’t find anything but the closing of the “donut hole” in Part D and some preventative care improvements like routine screenings (colonoscopy, for instance, where they used to whack you good on the copay. These are now covered @ 100%.)
How’ that gonna “lead down the path to the Privatization of Medicare, and on to Social Security.”
And it wasn’t that the school boards didn’t know. Hell, I knew what was gonna happen, and my IQ is somewhere around 60.
Obama and the Democrats proactively put Social security on the table with Bowles-Simpson and the Grand Bargain.
Obama continuously makes it clear he wants to “fix” SS with “fixes” that entail making the poor and middle class suffer while preserving the perks of the rich.
Obama’s cheap ploy to “put money in people’s pocket” by cutting SS payroll taxes and shifting that amount to the general fund was designed to make SS an easier target when he resumes pumping up the deficit hysteria after the election. There are any number of ways he could have helped “people’s pockets” without setting up SS to take the fall.
This post is just another post in a long line of posts from Grayson that focuses on the worst that the Repubs might do, while totally ignoring what the Dems have done, are doing, and have telegraphed that they plan to do. Not to mention all the Dem culpability in the harm that has occurred under Repub administrations. This gross distortion by total omission makes his posts propaganda, nothing more, nothing less.
Alan, why don’t you come out and plainly state what your position is on whatever problems you think SS has. Include what you would find acceptable and unacceptable when Obama and your party get down to the business of “fixing” it. Unequivocally state what you would vote for, and what you would vote against.
Thanks.
Boy I’m on board with this: “Obama’s cheap ploy to “put money in people’s pocket” by cutting SS payroll taxes…”
My reaction at the time was, “Well, that was just fucking brilliant! You just opened the door to messing with SS for anybody who would like to do that later.” I missed the part about Obama doing it for his own later convenience. Good shot.
I’m still not sure I see how “HCR” is gonna “lead” anywhere. He didn’t need any cover for The Catfood Commission. Current line (of BS?) is that PP&ACA will save money on Medicare. Nothing like fixing that damned Part D would do, but that’s the line anyway.
Never mind, it’s probably over my head. Thanks again.
I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but these posts by grayson are templates that he sends around. he couldn’t care less about your opinion because he never comes back to interact. He just hopes that it will give talking points to obots.
Actually, he used to come back and interact every once in awhile. That worked so well that he quit doing that.
I noticed :)
I aim my comments at those who read the replies, not the assistant who writes this crap and reports back to Grayson.
I was originally gonna say that but then wondered if I was confusing Grayson with Leo Gerrard and decided not to.
Those two are peas in the same pod.
Grayson may feel he’s doing all he can at this point, and maybe he is. But it won’t help much.
Check this out:
http://my.firedoglake.com/alangrayson/2012/06/14/%E2%80%A6-and-the-poor-get-poorer/
When was the last time you saw a Congresscritter’s comments edited by a moderator?
Grayson is actually for the middle class. How many of those are left? How many will be left in a year? 5 years? 10 years? He, like most Americans don’t give a damn about the poor (working poor or not). So if you don’t care about mine, why the fuck would I care about yours? Poor people aren’t the soldiers for the 1%! It’s the middle class. And they will follow orders. As far as I’m concerned, I say let the middle class fucking burn. Just like they did to us. Fuck the middle class, the soldiers for the 1%.
Heh, I missed that one. Thanks for leading me to it.
Looking over it now, it reminds me of how I sent Grayson money in response to his plea for donations along with a promise to vote against any bill that did not have a public option. He broke that promise and he kept my money. That’s what thieves and con-men do.
I don’t believe a word he says until I see him back it up with action.
Pardon me, Sir.
But it was President Obama who appointed The National Commission on Fiscal Reform and Responsibility, not Mitt Romney or the Republican Party.
Here’s the link to the “Moment of Truth (PDF),” the Commission’s recommendations (which didn’t even muster a sufficient number of votes, to force a vote in Congress):
http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/TheMomentofTruth12_1_2010.pdf
The Commission’s recommendations (cuts) are draconian, and especially harsh as they apply to lower- and middle-income Americans.
Excerpt from The Moment of Truth (PDF): “. . . the Commission proposes gradually moving to a more progressive benefit formula that slows future benefit growth, . . .” (i.e., cuts benefits)
According to Matt Bai, in his article entitled, “Obama vs. Boehner: Who Killed the Debt Deal?”, President Obama agreed to enact the draconian cuts to the Social Security monthly benefits via “means testing,” (referred to above as “slowing future benefit growth”) starting in 2015.
OTOH, when the Commission does call on more affluent Americans to do their part, by raising the “maximum taxable wage cap,” (a policy which I am in agreement with) they phase that tax hike in over many, many years. They don’t fully phase in the “higher wage cap,” until 2050.
The bottom line, the Democratic Party is only marginally better than the Republican Party, when it comes to “protecting” Social Security. It appears that both parties intend to eviscerate our social safety net, as we know it.
MAH
Yes, Alan, but your blue dog President, and other blue dog Democrats, will raise the retirement age and agree to cuts in social security, Medicare, and Medicaid under the excuse of necessity in order to curtail our national debt, instead of raising taxes on their rich donors. Let’s not just blame the Republicans, Alan. Where was your voice attacking Obama when he agreed over a year ago to the “Grand Deal” to cut social security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., and proposed last February to cut corporate taxes? I didn’t hear you and other Democrats attack the corporatism of Obama.
The Democrats will agree to Bowles-Simpson and excuse it out of necessity to curtail our debt instead of raising taxes on the wealthy. So it has been; so it will be.
Another inappropriate drive-by post.
Flagged with extreme prejudice.
…X 2
…imagine that…making the Ds and Obama own the doing they do.
…meanwhile lets keep mocking Mitt again and again… but who is POTUS now? Who wants Bowles-Simpson to succeed? Obama is and does.
So what is the goal in mocking Mitt but not Obama about SS?
Obots/Dbots? Any comment(s)? The IOKIYAAD BS?…no…it is not OK.
Wow!
No wonder he doesn’t dare come into the comment section!
We’re a tough crowd, huh? :)
timesthree–
Excellent comment. Recommended (if I could).
Thanks.
Blue
It’s a clever plan, and it will probably succeed. It’s the more effective evil at work.
Any shortfall caused by the Payroll Tax cut will have to come from the general fund or the Trust Fund, or both (I’m not sure how it will work ongoing), giving Obama and the Dems the excuse they crave to “fix” the problem by cutting benefits and raising the retirement age even further.
Of course, the Republicans will go along. It’s exactly what they want.
No one, least of all the media, will point out that Obama and the Dems created the problem in the first place.
Mark my words. After Obama is reelected he will begin shifting his actions toward some form of privatization. It won’t be on a grand scale at first, but it will be enough to open the door a crack. Once again, he will be the one getting things done for the one percent that the Republicans can only talk about doing.
timesthree–
Tom Harkin presented his “partial privatization” plan this week.
Of course, he doesn’t call it that. But it is exactly what it is.
Here’s the hyperlink to the plan brochure:
http://www.harkin.senate.gov/documents/pdf/5011b69191eb4.pdf
I’ll post the C-Span congressional hearing he held on this, when I get a chance to track it down.
Blue
Last week in his speech to the AARP, Obama talked about “strengthening” Social Security. Those are the kinds of weasel words that make my not quite 60 year old heart miss a beat or two.
Any politician saying he wants to strengthen, reform, protect, ensure the long term health of any program for the 99% is for sure going to cut the pluperfect hell out of it first chance he gets.
Orwell would be so proud.
Distracting the rubes while you pick their pockets?
I’m not a ‘bot, but I thought I’d give it a shot :)
Thanks.
Wow, I did not know this. Thanks for the link.
I just did a quick scan of the pdf and I’d say you are you are right on the money. The phrase “pooled and professionally managed” is the tell.
OK, I was wrong. Obama is not waiting until after the election
This is the most replies I can remember seeing in a grayson post.
I’ll give it to Alan. He’s still talking a lot of shit. Just like they did during the bush jr era. Then when they get the power they get instant amnesia on what they said and on what needs to be done. Alan and his dem crew give us the finger while saying, fuck you suckers.
Cutting Social Security did not become an inevitability until Obama raised it before his inauguration and appointed the Cat Food Commission soon after he took office, straight out of the Democratic Leadership Council website/playbook.
Until then, it truly was the third rail of U.S. politics, resisted by Democrats at every turn, including when George “I have capatull” Bush attempted it.
No Republican could have had Democrats casually discussing cutting Social Security and other “entitlements,” Obama also being the first Democratic President to use that term.
And this is one of many reasons why Democrats have become the greater of two evils, not the lesser.
I can hardly wait to see what the “Grand Bargain” will ultimately consist of, although OWS may have cut into that cat food commission momentum somewhat.
My only prayer now as to politics is for strong third parties and people who stop voting for the alleged lesser two evils out of fear of helping to elect Republicans.
We have far more to fear from Democrats.
Have you seen anything good for the people result from the word “reform?”
For just one of many examples, the Clinton administration touted “welfare reform.” After it passed, they bragged about having “ended welfare as we know it.”
And then, they want the mantle of Presidents like Roosevelt and his admirer in chief, JFK.
Give me a damned break.
How do you know? Which bill did he sponsor that ever got passed?
I could sponsor a bill for a gift from the federal government of $3000 a year for life. It would never pass, but I might get popular.
Every politician claims to be for the middle class because that is where the most votes are. Watch what they get done, not what say.
And speaking of the middle class, when did Democrats start ignoring the most needy and the most vulnerable among us?
You cannot support politicians like that and then wonder why they don’t fight for their lives over a program for seniors, the disabled and orphans and widows, which is what Social Security is.
You sent money to a multi-billionaire?
Gee, you must be really rich.
BA, can you name any Democrat elected to federal office after Bill Clinton who was a liberal?
Weiner, maybe, but look what his fellow Democrats in Congress did to him and over a photo of his drawers.
We should be a lot tougher.
thanx timesthree…where are all the bots anyway? :-)
Plain to see Obama re-election intents/efforts are heavily focused on selling the politics of voting against Romney and the Rs — not about why to vote for Obama and his D Party again.Hence the Hide and Seek Obama and the WashingtonDC Ds now playing with who is going to attack and gut SS. It is not Mitt who is going to do it. Obama(D)is likely going to be the POTUS who does that. The so called D POTUS.
Hence as we see across Internetstan political sites that are viewed as being D Party friendly and maybe even Dbot/Obot safezones the non-stop bashing/trashing/smashing of Mitt Romney,Paul Ryan and the Rs they get to stand in front of during this 2012 election year. Here at FDL bashing/trashing/mocking Mitt Romney is the standard app — takes no courage to do so — easily done — seeing lots of it too.
Attacking Mitt Romney and the Rs is easypleasy politics when done at knowable D friendly political netsites. But what is doing this about?
It seems more about getting Americans to vote against Mitt Romney and what Mitt Romney might do as POTUS. Less about getting Americans to vote for Barack Obama based on what Barack Obama has done or is doing or may do given the WH again for four more years.
Barack Obama surely has his share of partisan Americans who are going to vote for Obama again no matter what. Just going to do that.
Me? I think Barack Obama is the stealth SS takedown guy. Is sliding on his personal and politician charisma teflon. Obama likely is set on attacking Iran post 2012 election for having the audacity to not bow down to Obama and his WH regime and Imperial WashingtonDC. Doing so a genuine releasing of demons and malevolent dark spirits that will bring any attack on Iraq soon to dark places and dark outcomes. Americans can’t win doing imperialism against Iran anymore than Iraq was ever anything but a win for American Militarism and Imperialism.
Americans likely are going to get Obama as POTUS again — those who voted for Barack Obama will deserve what Obama does to them — they voted Obama back in so that is political fairplay.
The rest of us? We Americans who think voting Obama back into the WH is the way of deep error and wrong road taken and not doing that? We do not deserve what Barack Obama surely is going to proceed to do as POTUS during 2013-2017.
Mocking Romney is the chaff throw being used by Obama backers and D Party partisans to misdirect Americans away from what Obama has been doing,has done since Jan.20,2009. Doing so perhaps clever politics. Is it doing open-eyed politics? is it honestly done politics? No.
Anyway — like your comments here at FDL timesthree…FDL sets a big table for political discussion/advocacy. Lucky for you and I.
Thank you FDL.
Weiner was a liberal but the Democrats threw him under the bus: Nancy Pelosi, President Barack Obama, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Steve Israel, Allyson Schwartz, et al. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBsGZVqCh5k
The Democrats sold out to Corporate America decades ago in order to raise campaign contributions to get re-elected. Just follow the money.
Obama and the blue dog Democrats are even more dangerous than the Republicans: they fool the people into believing that they are for the working classes when they couldn’t care a rat’s ass.
I didn’t know that Grayson made that promise, and then broke it, about not voting for any bill without a public option.
It appears that all of the Democrats are not to be trusted. Imagine supporting Romneycare, a mandated system to guarantee business for the health insurers and pharmaceuticals.
It’s so true. Only the Right Wing is after social security.
That is, the Dems truss Social Security up and lay it out on the table, while the Right Wing wields the knife…
timesthree at #14. I totally agree with you.
But, Mr Grayson, Obama has as radical and aggressive an agenda as the Republicans do to undermine social security, medicare and medicaid.
Why didn’t you mention that? (As a result, your post is suspect.)
You only need to look to Obama’s unconscionable backdoor actions–without being asked to do so by the REpubs–that undermine these programs:
1-Obama LOBBIED aggressively behind the scenes to cut contributions to social security by 30%. Why would he do that, except to weaken it further, so that if it does not fail from lack of funds, it will? In Obama we have a very dangerous and aggeressive underminer of ss. Hard to believe but true; truth is stranger than fiction.
2-AND Obama tied that 30% of ss revenue to the federal budget–something FDR made a point of avoiding so that people can never say cut ss because there is no money in the federal budget. This is something that is proposed by rightwing think tanks and no Republican president had succeeded or tried to do before Obama. Imagine, Obama is more RADICAL than even Republican president before him. This is how unconscionable a Democratic president we have.
3-Obama appointed–of his own volition, because he had the power not to do so–an anti-social security Republican Alan Simpson and the neoliberal and former Morgan Stanley exec Erskind Bowles to the commission to cut the federal budget. No one asked him to appoint two economic conservatives bent on cutting ss to the commission. It is as though GWBush were to appoint a DEmocrat and the head of a union to a commission to cut the federal deficit. This is proof enough that Obama is a fradulent Democrat, and a very dangerous one at that.
4-Obama’s hand-picked commission chairs call for CUTTING the top income tax rate FURTHER, from 34% to 24-29% (in a plan to cut the federal debt!???!!). Bowles Simpson is gearing up for an aggressive push to institute their “emergency” proposals after the election. Yet more evidence of Obama’s very dangerous and radical War on the Middle Class.
5-Obama keeps throwing ss, medicare and medicaid on the table for REpubs to cut during the budget negotiations. And he aggressively calls for a $4 trillion cut in the federal budget deficit now–creating an urgency to undermine the social programs.
etc. etc. etc.
Read http://www.ObamatheConservative.com for more lists of what a dangerous DINO Obama is on the most critical economic points.
That is why they call Obama the “more effective evil”–Obama gets Democrats to adopt Republical strategies. For you to only critcize the REpubs and not Obama seems to indicate to me that you, like Obama, are getting ready to strike some “bargain” with the repubs to undermine these programs. And like the Repubs, Obama is creating and seizing the moment to seriously undermine the social programs in his ongoing War Against the Middle Class. Other than that, maybe he is 20% less radical than the Repubs.
We suck less and manipulate the electorate better than Republicans. That’s all the Democrats have to offer. It’s way past time for a viable third party candidates, but we all know that’s a pipe dream. They could never raise the 1/2 billion dollars they would need to compete in a Presidential campaign. If I see another bullsh*t Obama political advertisement on television I think I will get deathly ill.