“Stabilizing The Retirement Age”
by digby
Parker and Spitzer have been inviting national politicians on to their show to make a final argument for their sides going into next Tuesday’s election. Yesterday they had Bill Richardson on:
SPITZER: We’re going to talk a bit more about Afghanistan in a moment. But to come back to the deficit for a second. Would you — because I want to just sort of get your views on the things we’re asking everybody, most of the money and the entitlement, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, would you in some way change those programs right now to restore balance over the next 10, 15, 20 years? Social security in particular?
RICHARDSON: Well, you have to slow the growth. You have to have a bipartisan agreement. It’s never going to happen if we just demagogue this issue. But, yeah, you got to look at ways that you’re at least slowing the growth. You can’t just say, all right, we’re going to cut Social Security, the base of it. But there are ways that we financially, I believe, Governor, we can be more effective at stabilizing the retirement age, stabilizing Social Security, finding ways, you know, the Peterson, the Pete Peterson Commission, maybe make that a serious bipartisan effort. It is bipartisan, but have ways that both parties come together. And I think if the Republicans do make some gains, there’s a potential for a lot of bipartisan agreements. I hope they don’t make gains, but if they are, perhaps on free trade agreements, on efforts to create jobs…
SPITZER: Those things are hugely important. Just to kind of put a final footnote on the Social Security, when you talk about stabilizing the rate of growth, there really seem two ways to do that One is to bring the retirement age more into line with what demographics are in terms of life and work expectancy or the inflation adjustment which can be calibrated. Are those things that you think we can or should do?
RICHARDSON: Well we should — yeah, we should take a look at them. I’m not saying do both or do one. I’m saying that most importantly, Governor, you got to have a bipartisan agreement. If you’re just going to demagogue these issue, it’s not going to work.
Keep in mind that that’s two national Democrats there.
This is very worrying. Richardson may be out of the loop and buying into the current marketing because he just doesn’t know any better, but Spitzer, who should, was just as bad with his false choices. They both accepted the Peterson Shock Doctrine premise that now is the time to cut social security. (That’s when people are confused and scared and will accept absurd, plutocratic “solutions” to problems that don’t even exist.)
It would be interesting to see just one Democrat answer these question in the following way:
“I would love to know why people are obsessing about a possible, small shortfall in social security 30 years from now instead of the very real job shortfall we have today. If you’re worried about paying the bills, the quickest and best way to deal with it is to get people back to work as soon as possible. More workers means more revenue means less debt — everybody wins, now and in the future.”
I know that’s over simplified, but I think Democrats need to start challenging the illogical bumper sticker conventional wisdom that’s developed that basically says the only way to fix this economic slump is to cut social security.It’s utter nonsense that they are even talking about it right now when we have huge, immediate problems and our future problems will not be solved by doing this but will instead be made worse. (Does anyone think that having a huge generation of very poor old people who cannot work is going to make this country stronger?)
This is a very self-destructive act on the part of Democrats and they are playing with fire if they decide to “compromise” on this. If during an economic crisis, they go from being slow and ineffectual in their economic response to actively weakening the most important social program in America during, then the political consequences are likely to be significant.
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