It’s a simple question that progressive types – and many non-Washingtonians, for that matter –ask themselves all the time: If Social Security needs more money in coming decades, why not just raise the payroll tax? It’s how we’ve done it in the past, why can’t we just do it again? The reason is that the [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Reagan’
People’s Pension – the Book – Available Soon
09 Jan 2012 at 08:32
Eric Laursen
AK Press, Medicare, Social insurance, Social Security, The People's Pension
It’s been a long time in the works, but The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan will be available from booksellers by approximately mid-March. The worthy folks at AK Press are bringing out my book, which traces the 30-year war against Social Security and the struggle to defend it. You can [...]
Who’s Going to Defend Social Security?
Strangely enough, it’ll probably be the Republican right. Once again. Congressional Republican and Democratic leaders have chosen the members of the “Super Congress” that will determine round two of the spending cuts – and, possibly, tax increases – under the Budget Control Act of 2011. As expected, the GOP members are all hardliners on taxes [...]
Times’s Leonhardt misrepresents Social Security, Medicare
David Leonhardt, along with Matt Bai, is part of the New York Times’ center-right Washington tag team. So it’s no surprise when he mourns Congress’s failure to “rein in” entitlements. But every so often he goes a bit too far. In today’s column, he makes the legitimate point that cutting discretionary spending as part of [...]
A Short Guide to Social Security Doublethink
Figuring out what Social Security’s critics really want is sometimes difficult. They’ve become so afraid of being tarred as “privatizers” that they’ve developed an elaborate vocabulary of code words to soften the edges of their positions on the issue. A closer examination clears away some of the fog, however. The polite way to describe them [...]
Who Are the Tea Partiers, and Who Speaks for Them?
Dick Armey certainly thinks he does. As a self-appointed spokesperson for the movement, he’s trying hard to make Social Security privatization one of the big issues in the upcoming midterm election. It’s not clear his Tea Party comrades are behind him, however. The silly season is upon us, when the Democratic and Republican establishments become [...]
The CLASS Act
The last time Washington created a new social insurance program, a backlash caused it to be repealed 14 months later. Because it’s voluntary, the new long-term health benefit might avoid that fate. But its chances of survival are still uncertain. The most intriguing component of health care reform, to me, is the new long-term care [...]
Why the Deficit Commission Won’t Cut Social Security: A History Lesson
Nostalgists for some imagined, bygone era of bipartisanship don’t hold out a lot of hope for the deficit commission. They’re right, but for the wrong reasons. With a few exceptions, blue-ribbon presidential commissions are dismissed as window dressing, a polite way to kick the can down the road on a particular issue. Obama’s National Commission [...]
