Cat’s Out Of The Bag

OK, so I’m linking to Josh Marshall twice in one day, but that’s tough. Here he talks about the Wehner memo and points out something important:

In other words, this isn’t about the fiscal soundness of Social Security or the babyboomers moving toward retirement or anything else. As Wehner himself says, this is the best chance the opponents of Social Security have had in six decades of trying to phase-out the program.

And this allows us to see the whole matter clearly. Social Security has been around for seventy years. How many people do you know who really don’t like Social Security? Back when I was younger I’d go spend part of my summer at the subsidized retirement community where my grandparents lived. And I don’t remember many people who lived there bad-mouthing Social Security. And those folks had lived under the program for pretty much all of their adults lives.

Or, the more relevant question, how about people today? How many people think Social Security is a bad thing? A program that never should have existed? I’m not saying how many worry that the program may not be there when they retire. How many people don’t even like the whole concept?

I think they’re in a distinct minority.

So now you can see from memos emerging from the White House itself that this isn’t about ‘saving’ Social Security. If it were, what would that sentence mean — (“For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win”)? The first time in six decades they can save it?

Clearly, this isn’t about ‘saving’ Social Security. It is a battle to end Social Security and replace with something that Wehner clearly understands is very different, indeed the antithesis of Social Security.

This entire debate is about ideology — between people who believe in the benefits Social Security has brought America in the last three-quarters of a century and those who think it was a bad idea from the start

No kidding. The Republicans have always wanted to destroy Social Security:

Their motive for destroying social security is that it puts the lie to their contention that government can’t be trusted to do any positive social good. They are wrong and social security proves it. That’s why they must create the lie that it won’t work even while it’s clearly working. As the quotes above prove, they’ve been crying wolf for decades and yet the program continues to provide millions of old and disabled people a bare minimum of income when they are past their working years and it will continue to be funded, fairly painlessly, for at least another forty years. It’s very existence is a slap in the face to the Republican philosophy. That’s why they must destroy it.

And the fact that most people do not believe that social security is wrong means that they have to pull this dishonest scam.

“For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win — and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country.”

They can’t make it any plainer than that. They have always wanted to destroy Social Security.

Update: Here’s a letter Tamara Baker sent to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I don’t know if they printed it, but it gets to the point quite nicely:

Don’t let the crocodile tears of the Republicans fool you. They have

wanted to destroy Social Security from the time President Roosevelt started it nearly seventy years ago. And they’ve always been using trumped-up claims of imminent doom as a way to con Americans into letting them at the Social Security cookie jar.

[…]

Republicans hate Social Security because it proves them wrong. They and their big-business buddies have spent many decades and many hundreds of millions of dollars saturating the media with bogus horror stories about Social Security. But as with everything else they say they want to “reform”, their real goal is to kill it. Don’t

let them.

Sincerely,

Tamara Baker