There is a website that purports to expose “myths about the economy and government,” Cry Wolf Project. It was there that I read recently a series of quotes from Alf Landon, the 1936 Republican nominee for president. Landon, who lost, was railing against the Social Security Act of 1935.
“This is the largest tax bill in history,” the loser Landon said. “And to call it ‘social security’ is a fraud on the workingman. … I am not exaggerating the folly of this legislation. The saving it forces on our workers is a cruel hoax.”
A fraud on the working man? How about the only thing working for the working man? Then and now.
What strikes me is how little Republicans have evolved on Social Security in 80 years. Maybe Alf Landon really believed what he was saying back in 1936, giving him the benefit of the doubt. But it seems eight decades of evidence to the contrary has failed to inform Republicans like Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, to name but the first reform-minded wave ashore.
Republicans’ preferred methods may change — we’ve gone from dreams of privatization to the gut du jour, raising retirement age — but they are always on the ready to nail Social Security.
It’s an understatement to say that such dangerous oblivion, or plain old pig-headedness, is sad, since Social Security is keeping so many afloat. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently wrote that Social Security is the source of over half of retirement income for a majority of American seniors. A majority. And, even more critical, more than a quarter of people over age 65 rely on Social Security exclusively. Exclusively.
Yet several 2016 Republican candidates and presumptive candidates already are Alf Landon-ing the issue that historically has been — this is the odd part — the surest way to alienate seniors and lose an election. They are daydreaming aloud about once again adjusting the retirement age — 70? anyone for 80? — so as to “fix” a program that’s not really ailing.
The company line is that only poor planning leaves a retired workingman or -woman reliant on Social Security alone. Never mind the all-too-common scenario of pension plans going up in smoke like a fireworks stand too near a brush fire. Never mind a culture of jobs without benefits, much less pensions.
Republicans know their constituency, or think that they do. Maybe what they really know is their own investment accounts. The talk on the golf course, after all, is about counting capital gains, not anticipating Social Security checks.
Well, get a grip if you want to be president. Take a senior to lunch. Listen to someone other than your peers, the privileged. Most of us aren’t trading stock tips. We are making ends meet.
Krugman again: “What we learn from the refusal of Republican-controlled states to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government would foot the bill, is that punishing the poor has become a goal in itself, one worth pursuing even if it hurts rather than helps state budgets.”
The poor aren’t living longer, Krugman notes; life expectancy has risen dramatically among the wealthy, but hardly at all in the bottom half of wage distribution. So by raising the retirement age, you’re once again punishing the poor, the workers who need Social Security the most.
Social Security is not going broke, and isn’t an “entitlement” anyhow. It is our savings and our old-age cushion. Reform something else. Stop crying wolf in order to punish the working class.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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