Lying About Social Security
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Republican politicians, political consultants, and political commentators are fond of saying that Social Security was never meant to serve as a retirement program but only as a supplemental program. Ed Rollins recently made this claim on CNN. This claim can't possibly be true, not even in one's wildest imagination, and Ed Rollins and these others should know it.
Social Security was signed into law in 1935, and the railroad pension system was taken over by the federal government in 1937, but in the 1930s, less than 25 percent of workers were covered by private pension plans. So exactly what was Social Security supposed to supplement? Only the pension plans of this 25 percent of workers? What about the 75 percent of workers not covered by private plans? Social Security certainly applied to them too, but they had no private plans to supplement. Even by 1960, only about 30 percent of the labor force had private pension plans, which means that 70 percent had no plans to supplement. And 1960 was a good year.
So why do these people persist in telling this bald-faced lie?
Phil Gramm, former Republican Senator from Texas, is reputed to have said, when a colleague argued that a change to Social Security would harm 80-year-old retirees, "Most people don't have the luxury of living to be 80 years old, so it's hard for me to feel sorry for them." Is this, by chance, the attitude that all Republicans have toward the elderly? What else can explain their continual lying about Social Security?
The American hodge-podge of pensions is a shameful, inglorious mess. Private pension plans provide not even a snippet of security. Regardless of contractual provisions, companies can abandon both the plans and their workers whenever it is financially advantageous to the companies to do so. The money in those plans do not belong to the employees; they are company owned funds which can never be trusted or relied upon. And because of continuous Republican opposition to Social Security which dates back to the 1930s, the Social Security System is now also inadequate. Grow old and die seems to be the real motto of the Republican party.
©2008 John KozyRelated Tags: social security, republican party, ed rollins
Retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on social, political, and economic issues at http://johnkozy.mindsay.com and http://www.jkozy.com. Tries to avoid mere opinion and propaganda and emphasizes logic, facts, and evidence. All or any part of his articles can be cited or distributed when properly attributed.
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