Social Security and Deficit Reduction
12.07.2009
Social Security is currently running an annual surplus and will have a $4.5 trillion reserve at its peak. It is wrong to use this money, belonging to Social Security, to cover up the costs of war, pork barrel spending, and tax cuts for the wealthy. As Senator, she will press for honest accounting, so that Americans know how much the federal government is really borrowing from all sources, including from Social Security.
The co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, appointed by President Obama, have already compromised it beyond repair with their recent unfortunate comments. The President depicted a bi-partisan commission that would consider how to address the country’s long-term deficits. He implied that the commission’s objectivity, thoroughness and open-mindedness would command widespread confidence and, therefore, support.
The two co-chairs, former Senator Alan Simpson and former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, have already declared their conclusions that it will be necessary to reduce Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits to accomplish deficit reduction, ignoring other key issues that have prime responsibility for the deficits inherited – huge tax cuts favoring the wealthy and two costly unfunded wars. They have done this before other commissioners have been appointed, before the appointment of staff, before even a commission organizational meeting. This shockingly inappropriate conduct undermines confidence in any conclusions of this commission, and the appointees continued tenure on the commission should be seriously examined.
Deficit reduction should take into account the costs of two unfunded wars, the projected reductions in the deficit by enactment of health care reform and comprehensive immigration reform (where employers pay employment taxes regarding all their workers) and spending level freezes on programs that can and should sustain it.
Updated: April 13th, 2010
