"Everyone has noticed the use, once again, of crisis-mongering."
"It's the standard Bush administration tactic: invent a fake crisis to bully people into doing what you want."
"Today let's focus on one piece of those scare tactics: the claim that Social Security faces an imminent crisis. That claim is simply false."
That's the Party Line: "There is no Social Security crisis". Indeed, there's even a website--www.ThereIsNoCrisis.com--dedicated to promulgating that idea.
Krugman claims the SSA has been co-opted into the impending crisis effort by the Bush administration, but--as Luskin pointed out recently--in 1998, the Social Security Administration was saying "It is important to address the financing of both the OASI and DI programs soon..."
And they weren't the only ones warning of an impending crisis. "No Social Security crisis"? My, how times have changed.
"Gene Sperling - Clinton Economic Advisor": "this is a chance for both parties to actually show ... that we are saving more to meet the Social Security crisis in the future. If we don't do this, then we are just putting those burdens on a future generation."
Senator Kohl - Democrat: Wisconsin [March 22, 2000]: "Comprehensive Social Security Reform is still necessary. Today's changes will do nothing to hold off the coming crisis that will begin when we start drawing down the Social Security Trust fund in 2014. Congress needs to deal with this soon, otherwise we are shirking our duty to the American people."
WHITE HOUSE RELEASE [October 30, 1998] -- "It is normally impossible for any democracy to tackle long-term problems while the crisis is still only on the horizon. Putting the surplus off-limits until we address saving Social Security provides a strong impetus for all of us to do something to solve a fiscal challenge early so we can prevent a crisis later."
And then there's...
President Clinton
February 2, 1998 -- "We have a great opportunity now to take action now to avert a crisis in the Social Security system."
February 9, 1998 -- "every one of you know that the Social Security system is not sound for the long-term, so that all of these achievements ... are threatened by the looming fiscal crisis in Social Security."
February 9, 1998 -- "This fiscal crisis in Social Security affects every generation. ... That would be unconscionable, especially since, if you move now, we can do less and have a bigger impact..."
April 7, 1998 -- "Today the system is sound, but the demographic crisis looming is clear."
April 7, 1998 -- "All these trends will impose heavy strains on the system. Let's look at the next chart here. You can see that in 1960, which wasn't so long ago, there were over five people working for every person drawing Social Security. In 1997, last year, there were over three people --3.3 people -- working for every person drawing. But by 2030, because of the increasing average age, if present birthrates and immigration rates and retirement rates continue, there will be only two people working for every person drawing Social Security."
April 7, 1998 -- "If we act now, we can ensure strong retirement benefits for the baby boom generation without placing an undue burden on our children and grandchildren. And we can do it, if we act now, with changes that will be far simpler and easier than if we wait until the problem is closer at hand."
October 24, 1998 -- "Unfortunately, some in Congress already may be backing away from this historic opportunity. Just last week, the Senate Majority Leader said he may not be willing to join me in our efforts to save Social Security. That would be a grave mistake. As with so many other long-term challenges, if we act now, it will be far, far easier to resolve the problem than if we wait until a crisis is close at hand. I believe we must save Social Security and do it next year."
February 17, 1999 -- "the evident financial crisis which will be imposed on Social Security when the baby boomers retire"
March 12, 1999 -- "Now, if we do what I'm suggesting, not only can we deal with the financial crisis in Social Security and Medicare..."
August 6, 1998 -- "I don't want us to run right out and spend [the surplus] before we take care of the crisis in Social Security that is looming when the baby boomers retire."
Note how closely that rhetoric--"if we act now, it will be far, far easier to resolve the problem than if we wait until a crisis is close at hand"--mirrors that of President Bush, who said:
A lot of government, if the truth be known, is crisis-oriented management. You know, we wait and wait and wait, and then the crisis is upon us and everybody demands a solution. The problem with that when it comes to a modernization of Social Security is, is that the longer we wait, the more expensive the solution becomes.
And so one of my jobs, one of my charges is to explain to Congress as clearly as I can, the crisis is now. You may not feel it, your constituents may not be overwhelming you with letters demanding a fix now, but the crisis is now.
Because it lends itself so easily to caricature and misrepresentation, it may have been a poor choice of words, but "the crisis is now" is a mirror-image of President Clintons' position on the problem of Social Security in the 1990s.
The problem hasn't changed - only the rhetoric. Fortunately, one can remind them of what they said, back when...
UPDATE: In the comments, Reader "ZG" (not his real name) asks why the Democrats are taking this approach now. I think Tom Maguire answered that very well awhile back...
if I were a proper Dem, I would insist that there was no current Social Security problem, and await the day when a Dem president and Congress could implement a more progressive solution.
Thanks for organizing all of that information, it is really informative.
Do you think part of the reason that they are currently using this party line is because acknowledging the problem while Republicans hold the majority means the solution would likely be a conservative-oriented solution? By this I mean that a Democrat solution would generally be to expand the government and/or raise taxes, while a Republican solution would generally be cutting the program and/or trying to raise funds without using taxes.
I realize part (or all) of this could just be obstructionism, but outright denying there is a problem when they were saying the opposite not long ago makes me think this is more. If they were to agree there is a problem there might be a public outcry to fix it. With a Republican majority, the fix is likely to not be of the "big government" type they prefer.
Since this is one of the biggest (or is it *the* biggest?) government wealth redistribution programs, do you think they view any conservative-oriented solution, if it worked, as a high-profile detriment to the liberal movement?
"It's been discovered your house has termites. They will wreck your house over the next 20 years. You can fix the problem now, or have your house collapse in 20 years. What do you do?"
The Dem's want to sell the house to an unsuspecting owner.
What do the Dems really fear about reforming SSI? It can not be what they are saying. Every one of these anti-privatization Dems have and use private savings accounts, so this can not be their fear. All Federal Employees have a plan that allows private savings investment yet they come out against giving everyone else the same opportunity. Is the fear related to the lose of control of the masses due to the removal of their favorite scare tactic? If the next generation of blue collar workers start to develop large amounts of money in their investment accounts a transformation of their political affiliation might evolve??? Just my thought.
What do the Dems really fear about reforming SSI? It can not be what they are saying. Every one of these anti-privatization Dems have and use private savings accounts, so this can not be their fear. All Federal Employees have a plan that allows private savings investment yet they come out against giving everyone else the same opportunity. Is the fear related to the lose of control of the masses due to the removal of their favorite scare tactic? If the next generation of blue collar workers start to develop large amounts of money in their investment accounts a transformation of their political affiliation might evolve??? Just my thought.
You've gone to a lot of trouble to mislead your readers, even turning to an outright lie when you write:
"the crisis is now" is a mirror-image of President Clintons' position on the problem of Social Security in the 1990s.
I started walking down each of your quotes, until I realized that every one of them says that there is no crisis now, a crisis is coming later. Which is the whole point. "The Social Security crisis in the future" ... "there is no immediate financial crisis" ... "avert a crisis" ... "looming fiscal crisis," and so on. In other words, the crisis is not now.
Your dishonesty is exemplified by your using this quote to pretend that Clinton's position was "the crisis is now":
"Now, if we do what I'm suggesting, not only can we deal with the financial crisis in Social Security and Medicare..."
"Now, if we do what I'm suggesting, not only can we deal with the financial crisis in Social Security and Medicare, 15 years from now..."
I guess you didn't think anyone was going to check your links?
And considering that in the past ten years, the official projections have postponed the moment when Social Security will have to pay less than 100% benefits by twelve years... it kinda looks like we can take our time. What do you think those Democrats in the 1990s would say if they'd known that?
It seems you failed to read the full "the crisis is now" quote from Bush. He wasn't claiming an imminent crisis, either. Just like Clinton, he was claiming that the crisis lay in the future, and that it was critical that we deal with it now, as opposed to when the house of cards began to fall.
It's important that everyone in this debate acknowledge, as Jamie does, that there is no crisis now. That's really important, because when people make decisions in an atmosphere of crisis, the decisions are usually bad ones. This is a very important issue; let's give it the time it deserves.
A big problem that many progressives have with Bush's approach is not that he wants to improve Social Security, but that we suspect that he is actually trying to undermine it. We worry in particular that what seems to be a popular solution among Republicans, namely priviatization, is a bad solution, because it will increase the risk that seniors and disabled people will not receive the support they need.
In short, it sounds like Bush wants to burn down the village in order to save it.
Social Security was created in the wake of the great depression, when people like my great-grandfather realised more clearly than we do today the risk of having your retirement savings dependant on the stock market.
Social security can be bostered, as it was under Reagan, without changing the fundamental social contract.
How can average Americans sit aside and let our politians continue to break promises, as they deny the obvious? I can do the math - why can't they? Now they want to penalize any taxpayers who have worked hard to build ADDITIONAL nest eggs. They continue to raise the retirement age, as well. My kids have the right to have more control over their future, because the government is going to screw them in 30 years if we let the Democrats have their way.
Clinton's point was that, since his tax and economic policies had produced a surplus, the best use of that surplus was to fund Social Security to stave of a "crisis" that was generations away. In his "crisis" speech, Clinton said this, specifically:
"We now know that the Social Security trust fund is fine for another few decades"
In other words, the word "crisis" was, in Clinton's use, just as overblown as in Bush's. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Bush has already squandered the surplus on tax cuts, so Clinton's whole point is now moot. Social Security is now no more in "crisis" than the Federal budget generally. Probably less so.
Seems to me that in yelling that there is no 'crisis' in SS, the Dems have given the GOP a great opportunity. For the next 4 years the constant question to all Dem officeholders or -seekers should be this:
"The Democratic party has claimed there is no crisis with the current Social Security system. But all experts agree that the ratio of SS payers to retirees is growing, and will continue to grow, so that a few years from now the system is forecast to go bankrupt unless changes are made. "Accordingly, what adjustments would you propose to keep the system solvent; and when would you begin implementing them?"
Someone should ask this question of every candidate, every day. I suspect the 'uncommitted voter' will quickly start recognizing the kind of tapdance, evasive, bullsh*t non-answers the Dems will be forced to push. They sure won't want to cut bennies or raise the retirement age enough to matter, and if they propose raising payroll taxes, working-class Dems will defect en masse.
Those of you who are suggesting this fabricated "crisis" is being opposed by only Democrats are going to be shocked as this issue becomes more public. Republicans Bill Thomas and Olympic Snowe, who are on the Finance and Social Security panels, admit that there is no crisis. An editorial in Business Week by the Dean of The London Business School says there is no crisis. Most Economists, who tend to be conservative by nature, agree that there is no crisis. Yet, Bush says, "the crisis is now." The bigger question is how Americans are gullible enough to continually believe a President that lies to them on a regular basis. The figures on the solvency are based on the U.S. economy growing at the anemic rate of 1.6% a year. If you use the economic growth rate that Bush's own budget office uses when it calculates THE EFFECTS OF HIS OWN TAX CUTS, the surplus runs out in - never.
Actually he doesnt say the crisis is now, he says its in the near future. In our lifetimes in other words. The analogies used here are instructive in the sense that they put the current problem in a nutshell. Would you wait until the brain tumor was inoperable until doing something about it? I dont know any of you but id bet you'd do what your doctor suggested and get rid of the tumor now instead of later. This is basically what Clinton and Bush have been saying along with the majority of members of both parties, that is until Bush came into office, now all of a sudden the Dems have caught a bad case of amnesia. My two cents..
Americans' Future In One Plan I know that most of you are busy to read my book. As I explained previously that Taman Health Plan (www.trafford.com) takes care of all the health care, Medicare, Medicaid and social security. It will threw away all bureaucracies out of window. Let me explain shortly how it works: 1- there will be no more health care insurance companies, no Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. My plan will take care of all. 2- Basically will be only one Big Health care organization (Taman Health Plan or THP). 3- The center of the plan will be in Washington while the health departments in every state will be the branches. 4- One organized body will be taking care of the Health Care and long term care of all Americans replacing 1500 insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. 5- This will allow us to provide a uniform service to all Americans every where in both inpatients, outpatients and long term care. 6- When you go to any Duncan Donuts branch your expectation is to have a fresh coffee and a donut with no long wait. We will try to provide a similar predictable service everywhere as Duncan Donuts. With having only one body will be able to do that. 7- The Capital of the plan will be the funds of Medicare and Social Security (before the bankruptcy of both systems). The maintenance will be a yearly tax from each of us (will replace our yearly social security and Medicare holding taxes). A percent of each of us go to his account cards and a percent go to THP itself. The money of the plan will be invested by the investing sector of the plan very likely in Wall Street. 8- We will have 5 ATM cards with a corresponding accounts. Card A (children), Card B (working group 18-65years old), Card C (Medicare card >65 years old), Card D (Medicaid card), Card E ( expensive medicines or investigations).We will have the health cards devoted to health care and long term care. Thus we will have: health cards, banks with accounts to each card and credit card machines in outpatients care and hotelling part of hospitals and nursing homes. 9- Cards will pay for the outpatient medical care including doctors, emergency room visits, investigations, medical supplies, pharmacies and the hotelling part of hospitals and nursing homes. While the medical part of hospitals and nursing homes will be budget by the plan itself. 10- In the first year of issuing cards: Card B and C (most of people) will have a bonus it could be a percent of their Medicare and social security withholding (70 % or so). We will try to be fair to every one but every one has to now that most of us already lost a lot of money with the HMO's. For next year new comers to card B at age of 18 when first issued will have a bonus of 50,000 dollars. It will change every year by a percent a according to inflation. 11- every one of us will get a statement every one or two months of his card account. Card B account will phase in card C at the age of 65. If card C account is vanished Card D will be issued (hoteling part will be less luxurious). Only few of Card B will have card D if there account vanish most likely those with severe medical problems. 12- So basically most of us will have our own account Card B then card C. Say you are 45 and you have now in your account $ 200,000 you can take one or more years out of work, you Can retire early if you like and with your card you will control all the medical services and its prices. 13- With this card system we will end all bureaucracies of health care, Medicare and Medicaid. No one will stand between you and any medical or long term service (only your card). Shop around with you card, have early health care security and responsibility and invest in your health. 14- We will not need Social Security since after age of 65 we will be able to use our cards to stay in any nursing home each according to his account in card C or card D. So when you invest well in your health you will be able to enjoy a nicer nursing home when you get old (actually it will be also a kind of tourism). 15- The money in cards do not get inherited when we pass away but recycle in the plan to support the next generations. 16- The plan will have very positive effects not only in simplifying our care, save a lot of waste in health care, give early health care security and responsibility to Americans it will also have a positive effect on the economy, saving billions of dollars to Americans, creating jobs in health care and cutting outsourcing. Very likely, you figure it by now I could have sold the plan to one of the presidential candidate before the 2004 election for millions of dollars (they already spent 2 billion dollars). It is my gift to the American people (it will help the healing process of the two worlds America and the Muslim/Arabs).
Tavis Smiley’s "State of the Black Union" 2005 Unity Covenant...
Atlanta was the hot spot today. Tavis Smiley hosted his annual symposium "The State of the Black Union." The forum was held at Rev. Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. The program focused on defining the African American Agenda. Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition took opportunity to explain to those gathered that the Black Congressional Caucus has in place a ten (10) point plan of action. But regardless of the question of whether or not the agenda set forth by the Caucus is the substance of this group’s covenant the forum did establish that the process will include a community unity.
Today, black leaders voiced a need to advance the community. Freedom was the agenda until 1864. Civil rights, voting rights and access to public accomodations followed from 1864 to 1964. Leveraging the black community’s collective capital appears to be the new covenant.
They voiced a concern that Democrats have taken the black community for granted and the republican party "just takes, using blacks who really have no power to lead."
The highmark of the event was when the Honorable Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam, explained to the group that "regardless of where we have been, we want to advance our people." He said, " black children can’t eat at the table of illusion and hypocrisy." He added, "we can’t focus on the house that denied us access for 400 years." He closed, "the hell with democrats and republicans."
These African American leaders, carrying the history and weight of the black experience want group unity. They appear to have found meaning in their individuality and heritage. It’s more than a common skin pigmentation. It has now become a community based on a social phenomenon of systematic and comprehensive forces that only those challenged by a longstanding history of discrimination and violence may understand.
The Need:
The level playing field remains more illusion than reality... Since the start of George W. Bush presidency in January 2000 a general concern in the African American community was voiced that on issues that are of the greatest importance to millions of Americans, the President’s policies are misplaced priorities. The uncertainty continued into 2004 election.
But there’s one truth above all others in second term elections. They are referendums on the incumbent. So as hard as it is to accept, there are other Americans outside the African American community that like the job that George W. Bush is doing. And, with re-election he’s not an asterisk anymore alone among American presidents. That is, riding the votes of 59 million (other)Americans, he’s the president regardless of the fact that majority of African Americans who voted would rather have had the other guy.
So... it’s time to move on. African Americans must put their differences aside. American identity is not a function of birthright but a way of life. The African American community must keep moving toward the America identity it believes is possible. Isn’t democracy great?
Some argue "African American leaders judges America from the utopian standard, never comparing America to anything other but the Garden of Eden (immigrants, for example, are said to compare America to their old country)." But, it has been only forty years since separate water fountains of Jim Crow prohibitions and many Americans would now like to proceed as if the slate is clean and the scale is balanced.
The upward strides of many African Americans into the middle class have given the illusion that race cannot be the barrier that some make it out to be. However, one in four African Americans continue to live below the official poverty line (versus approximately one in nine whites). The optimistic assumption of the 1970s and 1980s was that upwardly mobile African Americans were quietly integrating formerly all-white occupations, businesses, neighborhoods, and social clubs. Black middle- and working-class families were moving out of all-black urban neighborhoods and into the suburbs. But, the one black doctor who lives in an exclusive white suburb and the few African American lawyers who work at a large firm are not representative of the today’s black community. And although most white Americans are also not doctors or lawyers, the lopsided distribution of occupations for whites does favor such professional and managerial jobs, whereas blacks are clustered in the sales and clerical fields.
In short, the inequalities run even deeper than just income. One must compound and exponentiate the current differences over a history of slavery and Jim Crow, and the nearly fourteenfold wealth advantage that whites enjoy over African Americans—regardless of income, education, or occupation—needs little explanation, and add the failure of the education system where African Americans children are the clear victims.
The explanations for economic inequality perceives the American political economy as being fundamentally fair with virtually everyone guaranteed an equal opportunity to compete, work hard, and excel in American schools, labor markets, housing markets, and other American social institutions. However, using wealth as a measure of economic inequality, the same top twenty percent of American households controlled over sixty-eight percent of the net worth of the United States, leaving virtually no wealth in the hands of the bottom twenty percent.
Economic inequality that characterized the United States at its inception continues to influence contemporary institutional practices and American social institutions routinely discriminate against African Americans denying them the means of acquiring human capital (innate individual capacities such as talent and motivation combined with achieved qualities such as educational qualifications and employment experiences). Limited to segregated neighborhoods, educated in inferior schools, and lacking access to the good jobs that are increasingly located in inaccessible suburban neighborhoods, African Americans bear an unfair share of the costs and economic inequality in the United States constitutes economic injustice.
Recurring discrimination in workplaces and elsewhere wastes human capital and seriously restricts and marginalizes its victims. The negative impact of racial animosity and discrimination includes a sense of threat at work or elsewhere, lowered self-esteem, rage at mistreatment, depression, the development of defensive tactics, a reduction in desire for normal interaction, and other psychological problems. The costs of racial animosity and discrimination extends well beyond the individual to families and communities. While many African Americans may have managed to overcome discrimination, their struggle will take a toll in their personal health or on the ability to maximize contributions to the larger society.
Discussion:
Are some blacks becoming a "black bourgeoisie?"
Are some blacks controlling the wealth and power within the black community and turning its back on its own people?
Are many members of black America adopting the values, standards and ideals of the white middle class, and are trying to distance themselves from the black poor?
In the 1960s, federal entitlement programs, civil rights legislation, equal opportunity statutes and affirmative action programs broke the open barriers of legal segregation. The path to universities and corporations for some blacks was now wide open. More blacks than ever did what their parents only dreamed of – they fled blighted inner-city areas in droves. The new frontier, business where the dollar is made and where significant wealth and resources are at stake.
But, is there a widening rift between the black haves and the black have-nots that has been blurred by racism, ignored by blacks and hidden from white society?
Is black wealth, like white wealth, now concentrated in fewer hands?
A study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, shows progress toward school desegregation peaked in late 1980s. That is a half-century after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of American education, schools are almost as segregated as they were when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The report said that a massive migration of black families toward the suburbs is producing "hundreds of new segregated and unequal schools and frustrating the dream of middle-class minority families." According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test report, by the 12th grade, on average, black students (in the United States) are four years behind those who are white or Asain.
The "NAEP" test report not only average scores for each racial or ethnic group; they also place each individual test-taker in one of four different "achievement levels." The bottom is labeled below basic, which is reserved for students unable to display even "partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills." In five of the seven subjects tested, a majority of black twelfth graders perform Below Basic. In math, the figure is almost seven out of ten, in science more than three out of four.
While this gap may not be hidden from public, black republicans have been inhibited from describing the problem in its full dimensions. But closing the skills gap is the answer to real racial equality in American society.
What, in fact, are black republicans doing with what they aggregate?
Access to positions of power and prestige – and to well-paying jobs in general – are limited because blacks typically leave high school with an eighth-grade education. The status of blacks today is different than it was a half century ago, when almost 90 percent of blacks lived in poverty. By now more than 40 percent of blacks describe themselves as middle class, and a third live in suburbs. College attendance rates are as high although a high percentage drop out before getting a four-year degree. African-Americans are CEOs and occupy lofty positions in the federal government. But all is not well.
The most discouraging news of all is that which has been barely discussed by black leaders: the appalling racial gap in academic achievement in the K-12 years. Without an education, black children are slaves to the world they live in. Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision struck down legalized school segregation to give equal educational access to African Americans and other minorities. But, today’s major American educational issue still involves race.
Blacks have no choice but to prepare its young. At least three black men ascended in the aftermath of civil rights movement to become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and an additional 275 or more senior black executives are now no less than three steps away from the CEO. They’ve attended the nation’s most prestigious schools, learned how to navigate the highest reaches of the systems, and they have thrived.
But, for all their great wealth and enormous resources, it appears most sucessful blacks remain absent from the struggle of educating our young. Recently, Kmart Holding Corp. chose Aylwin Lewis to improve the giant retailer’s image and operation. Lewis joins Stanley O’Neal of Merrill Lynch, Richard Parsons of Time Warner, Ken Chenault of American Express and Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae as the only African American chief executives heading top publicly trading companies in the U.S.
Corporations today say they do look to a talent pool largely comprising minorities and women for their senior and middle managers. But the level of education and the caliber of schools blacks attended are not equal, and the competition for market share is so ferocious that companies must recruit the best talent.
George W. Bush appealed to Americans’ best instincts when he declared that no child should be left behind.
But?
All agree that every child in America should have the same opportunity to reach his or her full potential regardless of the color of skin, gender or the income level of the child’s parents. The president’s plan has set up millions of vulnerable kids for failure, leaving black youth with another dose of mostly symbolic politics. The education reform accountability system based on annual testing in grades three through eight that financially sanctions schools that do not show quick improvement, will do a great deal of additional damage to the children in America’s most-troubled public schools. It is wrong to expect schools to succeed virtually overnight when so little is done to attack inequalities in education.
How can he expect the poorest children, who face every disadvantage, to do as well as those who have every advantage?
Given Bush’s spending priorities there is little left to finance his efforts to leave no child behind. Further, by the time students enter the third grade, when the Bush testing plan would kick in, much already has been determined about whether individual children will succeed or struggle academically.
America’s schools must be accountable to the children being educated in them and to their parents. But making high-stakes annual tests the sole determinant for students and their schools, and imposing major costs on those who fail, is counterproductive.
In closing, assessment should measure, not drive, education reform. Why force schools to spend thousands on consultants to teach test-taking strategies instead of substantive learning? The magic that can happen between a creative teacher and engaged students is too often lost in schools driven by test preparation.
