Obama’s pseudo leadership continues: Social Security and more at stake

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Suddenly, now that he needs to jump start his disgruntled base for the next election, Obama is making all the right noises, and striking the right (populistoid) postures, re-enacting the pre-2008 candidate’s promises and sound bites. Believe at your own risk.

Watch what he does not what he says.

By Patrice Greanville

IN CHARACTERISTIC OPPORTUNISTIC FASHION, Barack Obama continues to triangulate and equivocate in the face of a fierce assault by the forces of plutocracy against the rapidly shrinking economic and political security base of the American working people, an attack spearheaded  by “errand boys” like Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin’s notorious governor Scott Walker, Ohio Governor John Kasich, a cold-blooded and cynical cryptofascist with a background in Wall Street, and scores of other Republican mobsters spreading like a malignancy over the already badly debilitated political body of the American nation.    

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NOTE: For some ideas about what to do to avoid succumbing to the “Lesser Evil” once again, see our feature:

Rebuilding the Left in a Time of Crisis
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Exaggeration? Hardly. Among these freshly minted leaders not a single one can pass muster as even a semi-decent private individual, let alone one worthy of being entrusted with the destinies of entire states, or the nation itself.  The examples abound, but let’s consider a handful before moving on to our real topic, the lethal non-leadership of the man sitting in the White House.

In this race to oblivion, the American South and the West have long stood out for their rotten choices in politicians (other parts of the nation are certainly not unblemished), so it’s no surprise that Florida—among other states to claim this kind of dubious honor—now also gives us another terrific example of misguided democratic “choice” in the election of Rick Scott, a guy who could be a poster boy for the putrid conditions of the American political system, and Republicans in particular (again, this is not to absolve the highly complicit Democratic leadership, which Obama so well incarnates).  Who is Scott, you may well ask? The Wiki describes a fairly  ordinary background for this kind of true believer in the “American Dream” (bold ours):

Rick Scott, he should be in jail not in Florida's gubernatorial mansion.

“Richard Lynn “Rick” Scott (born December 1, 1952) is an American politician who is the 45th and current Governor of the U.S. state of Florida.  Scott served in the U.S. Navy and then went into business. He earned a business degree and law degree and joined a Dallas firm where he became partner. In 1987 he helped found the Columbia Hospital Corporation with two business partners; this merged with Hospital Corporation of America in 1989 to form Columbia/HCA and eventually became the largest private for-profit health care company in the U.S. He was forced to resign as Chief Executive of Columbia/HCA in 1997 amid a scandal over the company’s business and Medicare billing practices; the company ultimately admitted to fourteen felonies and agreed to pay the federal government over $600 million.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} Scott later became a venture capitalist, and entered into politics in 2010, when he announced his intention to run for Governor of Florida. Having defeated Bill McCollum in the Republican primary election, Scott defeated Democrat Alex Sink in a close race in the 2010 Florida gubernatorial election.^{[8] “}

^{One of Scott’s least original (for a posturing Republican) but most deleterious acts in office so far has been his rejection of federal moneys to build high speed rails in Florida, something that the whole nation wants and needs and that Obama has been pushing with a certain degree of steadfastness.}

So this is the kind of Randian felon at the helm of one of this nation’s most important states, and yet, while one poll after another clearly points to the rising revulsion against the politics of hyper-individualism and plutocratic plunder represented by this crowd, Obama, as intimated earlier, continues to refuse to lead in a courageous fashion. Indeed, much of the rebirth of the GOP (after being in its deathbed in the wake of George W. Bush’s disastrous tenure) is directly owed to the Democratic leadership’s utter corruption and lack of principled stands on any and all matters of true import to the American citizenry. Not only has Obama governed as a continuation of Bush II, a sort of smoother-talking Bush “lite”, prolonging and expanding wars and the spreading police state, and selling out the public’s and nature’s interest in one instance after another, from bankers’ bailouts to health insurance and the protection of vital environments like the Gulf (where the scandalous lack of leadership threatens another incalculable tragedy), but in so doing he and his collaborators have essentially squandered almost three precious years in which a truly progressive agenda, a mandate, really—the change so many thought they were getting when they cast their votes for the Obama ticket— could have been sold to the American people and implemented, decisively disarming the ghoulish GOP and its antisocial ideas for generations.

He’ll betray this one, too

Now, with the renewed debate about the supposedly “collapsing” social security system and Medicare’s “unfair entitlements”, history presents Obama with a wonderful opportunity to truly put some strong wind behind his sails, and win a big one for the people.  FDR he’ll never be, but it’s way better to be “FDR Lite” than “Bush Lite”.

As expressed in many columns we have published over the years, the idea of the Social Security system being in imminent danger of failure is not only groundless but a cynical lie perpetrated by the country’s political, economic, and media elites for the benefit of the reigning plutocracy. The solutions to such terrible “emergencies”—should the problem really exist—are as easy as they are obvious. First, social security could be made “solvent” till kingdom come, literally, if the honorable policymakers had the requisite minimum honesty and intelligence to overhaul the system with NO arbitrary income caps whatsoever.  Since this was not done when the Social Security Act was first passed back in 1935 under FDR’s New Deal administration, chiefly, it should be noted, due to bipartisan agreement between reactionary Republicans and Dixiecrats who tried to torpedo the act and curb its more generous provisions (see below) , there’s absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be done today. For its entire life Social Security has been a bastion against the indignities of poverty and old age, despite the fact that it was conceived as a 3-legged horse. That says something about the potency of picking the right concept.

The unsinkable SSN

As originally drafted, “the Act provided benefits to retirees and the unemployed, and a lump-sum benefit at death. Payments to current retirees are financed by a payroll tax on current workers’ wages, half directly as a payroll tax and half paid by the employer. The act also gave money to states to provide assistance to aged individuals (Title I), for unemployment insurance (Title III), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (Title IV), Maternal and Child Welfare (Title V), public health services (Title VI), and the blind (Title X).^[11]

Besides the egregious handicapping of the Act  via an artificial contributory income gap, denounced in its day by the usual rightwingers in both parties as “another unfair form of taxation”, Social Security was also born severely discriminatory.  As related by the ever-helpful WikiPedia:

“Most women and minorities were excluded from the benefits of unemployment insurance and old age pensions. Employment definitions reflected typical white male categories and patterns.^[12] Job categories that were not covered by the act included workers in agricultural labor, domestic service, government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers.^[13] The act also denied coverage to individuals who worked intermittently.^[14] These jobs were dominated by women and minorities. For example, women made up 90% of domestic labor in 1940 and two-thirds of all employed black women were in domestic service.^[15] Exclusions exempted nearly half of the working population.^[14] Nearly two-thirds of all African Americans in the labor force, 70 to 80% in some areas in the South, and just over half of all women employed were not covered by Social Security.^[16][17] At the time, the NAACP protested the Social Security Act, describing it as “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”^[17]

Some have suggested that this discrimination resulted from the powerful position of Southern Democrats on two of the committees pivotal for the Act’s creation, the  Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee.^{[citation needed]} Southern congressmen supported Social Security as a means to bring needed relief to areas in the South that were especially hurt by the Great Depression but wished to avoid legislation which might interfere with the racial status quo in the South. The solution to this dilemma was to pass a bill that both included exclusions and granted authority to the states rather than the national government (such as the states’ power in Aid to Dependent Children). Others have argued that exclusions of job categories such as agriculture were frequently left out of new social security systems worldwide because of the administrative difficulties in covering these workers.^[17]

Social Security reinforced traditional views of family life.^[18] Women generally qualified for insurance only through their husbands or children.^[18] Mothers’ pensions (Title IV) based entitlements on the presumption that mothers would be unemployed.^[18]

Historical discrimination in the system can also be seen with regard to Aid to Dependent Children. Since this money was allocated to the states to distribute, some localities assessed black families as needing less money than white families. These low grant levels made it impossible for African American mothers to not work: one requirement of the program.^[19] Some states also excluded children born out of wedlock, an exclusion which affected African American women more than white women.^[20] One study determined that 14.4% of eligible white individuals received funding, but only 1.5% of eligible black individuals received these benefits. [Social Security] ^[”

Well, that’s pretty much the background history for the Social Security Act, which, again, could be fortified instantly, without ever having to even remotely consider something as reckless and cynical as privatization, by the simple expedient of lifting the income cap.

Obama enters the fray, wobbly as usual—expect theatrics and no substance

Against this backdrop, the appearance of Obama, who among other things conceded validity to the reactionaries’ cries for “reform” of Medicare and the Social Security Act by dignifying their howls through the creation of a suitably reactionary body, the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, helmed by hidebound conservatives like the inimitable Alan Simpson, bodes ill for the possibility of making social security better. Such is Obama’s record of betrayals and conciliation (without a real fight) of the reactionaries’ agenda, that his very embracing of the idea of lifting income caps almost automatically dooms it. It is with plenty of anxiety, therefore that I read this dispatch from Reuters, reproduced  below so that readers can appreciate, once again, how seductive the rhetoric can be. Whatever you do from here on out, don’t say you were not amply warned.

PATRICE GREANVILLE is editor in chief of The Greanville Post.

ADDENDUM FEATURE

Obama backs lifting income cap for Social Security

Tue, Apr 19 2011

By Kim Dixon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that boosting the amount of individual income subject to Social Security taxes should be considered as a way to put the retirement program on a stronger fiscal footing.

The president’s deficit commission late last year proposed raising the income cap on Social Security taxes, now at about $107,000, but Obama has shied away from supporting specific proposals.

Many Republicans criticize the idea as a tax hike.

Neither political party has wanted to touch the government-run program, in part due to its popularity among seniors, a crucial voting bloc. But it is seen as much easier to fix than tackling government-run healthcare programs.

Obama noted that Social Security has not been a driver of budget deficits, though the program will be unable to pay out full benefits to retirees in a few decades. For that reason he said “tweaks” are needed to stabilize the program’s finances.

“For the vast majority of Americans, every dime you earn, you’re paying some in Social Security,” Obama told college students in Virginia. “But for (billionaire investor) Warren Buffett, he stops paying at a little bit over $100,000 and then the next $50 billion he’s not paying a dime in Social Security taxes.”

“If we just made a little bit of an adjustment in terms of the cap on Social Security, that would do a significant amount to stabilize the system,” Obama said.

Social Security, created in 1935 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms, has accumulated huge surpluses for years, which were borrowed by the government to help finance income tax cuts and other programs.

Obama reiterated that Social Security should be tackled separately from broader talks on the deficit.

“Let’s not confuse that with this major budget debate that we’re having about how we deal with both spending and revenues because that is the problem that is going to require some really hard work and some bipartisan cooperation,” he said.

Social Security will pay out more benefits than it collects in taxes this year. It will return to surplus next year and in 2015 start tapping into interest income and trust fund reserves. If Congress does nothing, the trust fund will be exhausted by 2037 and taxes will cover only about 78 percent of benefits.

Raising the income cap “is a progressive solution to the problem,” said Bill Samuel, chief lobbyist at the AFL-CIO labor group. “It is not a severe problem; it can easily be dealt with.”

After hesitating to take hard positions in recent months, Obama last week laid out a strategy to cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years, drawing a stark, ideological contrast with a plan pitched by Republican congressman Paul Ryan.

Obama’s blueprint, though, did not back boosting the Social Security income cap, but recommended bipartisan talks to address the program’s long-term challenges.

Meanwhile, a group of senators known as the “Gang of Six” is working on a plan to put the deficit commission’s plan into legislation. That bipartisan panel endorsed raising the amount of income subject to Social Security taxes.

(Additional reporting by Donna Smith and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Paul Simao)

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