It’s the elephant in the room: Social Security is not going to work in the future and something has to be done about it. But so far, no one but Fred Thompson is willing to address the issue:
Thompson’s proposal, by contrast, includes lower-than-promised benefits for future retirees, as well as new private accounts to make Social Security solvent for 75 years. “If somebody’s got a better idea let them put it on the table,” he said recently, daring his rivals.
Given the divide between the parties, Social Security seems likely to become more of an issue during the 2008 general election than it has been in the campaigns for the presidential nominations.
For now, the most favored suggestion, creation of a bipartisan commission, seems to hold different meanings for different candidates.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, said earlier this fall he favors creation of a commission like the one that hatched a financial fix for the system nearly a quarter century ago. Yet, maneuvering for the support of the conservative Club for Growth, he also said, “I would rule out a tax increase,” thus rejecting a key element of the 1983 compromise signed by then-President Reagan.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois are among the Democrats who favor a bipartisan commission. At the same time, they evidently seek to preserve their own maneuvering room.
“I’d take everything off the table until we move toward fiscal responsibility and before we have a bipartisan process,” Clinton said in one recent debate, drawing criticism from fellow Democrats who accused her of ducking the issue.
“Everything should be on the table,” Obama said over the summer. Now, in a shift in emphasis that has drawn notice by his rivals, he says, “We don’t need to cut benefits or raise the retirement age,” a position that flatly rules out neither approach.
In cases where Social Security has flared in the campaign, it’s served as a stand-in for a broader debate over candidate candor.
“I think the American people … deserve a president of the United States that they know will tell them the truth, and won’t say one thing one time and something different at a different time,” former Sen. John Edwards said at a debate on Oct. 30.
Note: only Fred has a plan in that group. I don’t know if Ron Paul’s addressed it as of yet. But here’s the thing to ask:
- Is it Constitutional?
- Would the Founding Fathers support this program?
I can’t point to the part of the Constitution which allows the federal government to take from the masses to provide for the retirement of the elderly. I don’t think it exists. Of course, I will be told to look at the General Welfare clause, but I know that the Founding Fathers did not intend for that to be used in this way.
Social Security is a program that needs to be allowed to die. The government has created a mass of humanity that looks to the to provide for them, instead of a government that gets out of the way so they can provide for themselves. That’s not what the government was supposed to do.
There needs to be a plan that slowly weans the population off the government teat and kicks them back out on their own.
