cat food watch

Janet Ritz (Huffington Post) claims that Romney used a creationist debate tactic of rapidly inundating your opponent with lies. (hat tip Bill):

The Gish Gallop, named after creationist Duane Gish, is the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time. The term was coined by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education.

Matt Stoller (Naked Capitalism) notes that Romney was lying but reminds us that Obama isn't really an opponent of Romney on most issues:

[Obamas'] second term agenda is to cut Social Security, Medicare, frack, cut corporate taxes, bust more teachers unions and pass more neoliberal trade agreements. He is proud of this record. So are his people. But he knows he can’t run on it because it’s unpopular, so instead, he presented himself as a nice likeable guy.

Yves Smith links student debt and Social Security in an interesting way:

I’ve never understood when (once in a while) someone (clearly young) shows up in comments and rails against Social Security and Medicare because of the burden it imposes on him. Now I get it. The student debt issue is deepening social fractures. If young people are asked to stand on their own, and given only unpalatable choices (forego a college degree, the entrance ticket to middle class life, or accept debt slavery at a tender age), no wonder they adopt a “devil take the hindmost” attitude. I hope some of these people who so cavalierly argue for loading up the next generation with debt realize that the young may not want to take care of them either, and they are far more at risk. The outcome of cutting social safety nets to the elderly ultimately means that old people will die faster.

Student loans should never have been cut loose from bankruptcy protection, usury limits, and other forms of common decency. Belt-tightening doesn't mean being garroted by criminals in business suits.

Conservatives who believe the world is a jungle and we all have to fend for ourselves manage government affairs in such a way as to assure that will happen. What they lack in leadership skills they make up for in propaganda, however. They love to call Social Security an "entitlement," for example, as in the phrase "people who think they are entitled to a government handout." Such whiny people don't exist except in Wikipedia footnotes (also supplied by wingnuts).

Yet everyone in Washington--liberal, neoliberal, centrist, other--uses the word entitlement when talking about Social Security. Originally it was just bloodless bureaucratese but you better believe the Fox News daily talking points memo tells the blowdried talking heads to use it.

Reality check: Social Security payments aren't something you're entitled to, they are something you own. "Paid-in" is the accurate way to describe them.

There are two federal taxes on a paycheck. One puts money in the "general fund," used for day to day operations of government. The other, confusingly called "payroll tax," funds Social Security. The latter exists off the government balance sheet (and is not part of any deficit)--it's held in trust for you and paid out when you need it.

The program has worked well for seven-plus decades but again, conservatives spread the meme that the money has been squandered and you will never get it back. Not true--Congress under Reagan (yes, that Reagan) took steps to fund the trust by raising payroll taxes and it's presently flush. The trustees regularly report on the state of the fund and disability payments are the only part where corrections are needed in the near term:

Combined trust fund assets are projected to exceed one year’s projected benefit payments for more than ten years, through to 2035. However, the Disability Insurance (DI) program satisfies neither the long-range nor short-range tests for financial adequacy. DI costs have exceeded non-interest income since 2005 and trust fund exhaustion is projected for 2018; thus changes to improve the financial status of the DI program are needed soon.

Unfortunately your president has embraced the conservative meme and just proposed lowering payroll taxes as part of his jobs package. The reduced revenue to Social Security will be replaced by IOUs from the general fund, which then makes Social Security subject to deficit-reduction theatre such as we all endured over the "debt limit crisis."

An emerging wisdom is that a Republican can't end Social Security (as Bush demonstrated) and that it will take a Democrat. Obama appointed a commission stacked with people who use the word entitlement and he is taking the first steps to ending the program.

Pres. Obama thinks you are an idiot and don't know there are two forms of tax on your check--the one that pays for foreign elective wars and the one that pays for your Social Security. Guess which one he proposed to cut last night as part of his "jobs package."

A certain breed of aristocratic right winger (particularly the type that inherited wealth or got rich in the financial casinos) has obsessed about ending Social Security since the days of FDR. Apparently one of these specimens is now a close advisor to Pres. Obama. The crew's current strategy is to claim that Soc. Sec. is "in crisis" and needs to be "fixed." Apparently this isn't true at all. But how not true?

From a press release from Congressman Jerrold Nadler, via Atrios:

[T]he Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.5 trillion dollar surplus, and it will be able to pay 100 percent of benefits through 2037, according to the Social Security Board of Trustees. What’s more, Social Security has not contributed at all to the federal deficit.

The statement you receive in the mail from Social Security corroborates this, but makes it sound more dire:

In 2016 we will begin paying in more benefits than we collect in taxes. Without changes, by 2037 the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted [based on intermediate assumptions from the Trustees] and there will be enough money to pay only about 76 cents for each dollar or scheduled benefits.

Pres. Obama's "Fiscal Commission," also known as the Catfood Commission because it is stacked with people who think you will do fine if you live on Science Diet after age 70, is talking about raising the retirement age or cutting benefits in the next five years to fix this. But there is no present "crisis" in Social Security. Lots of time to think about how to fund it at 100% after the year 2037. One idea might be closing the 700 military bases the US maintains around the world for no reason after the end of the cold war.