Paul Ryan’s Fuzzy Medicare Math and Revisionist Social Security History
Rep. Paul Ryan is apparently feeling the sting after hearing his infamous “makers and takers” philosophy referenced in the President’s inaugural address.
“The commitments we make to each other through Medicare, Medicaid and social security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers, they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” President Barack Obama Inaugural address
Clearly Congressman Ryan is hoping some revisionist history combined with fuzzy math will gloss over his well known antipathy for Social Security and Medicare (trying to clean the slate for 2016?). The fuzzy math part of his strategy came in his incredible “maker-taker” rework in an interview with Politico after the inauguration:
“When the president does kind of a switcheroo like that, what he’s trying to say is that we are maligning these programs that people have earned throughout their working lives,” he said. “So it’s kind of a convenient twist of terms to try and shadowbox a straw man in order to win an argument by default…No one is suggesting that what we call our earned entitlements, entitlements you pay for like payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security, are putting you in a taker category,” Ryan said. “No one suggests that whatsoever. The concern that people like me have been raising is we do not want to encourage a dependency culture.” Rep. Paul Ryan, January 22, 2013
Hmmmm. There’s that “dependency culture” again, another favored Ryan meme along with the safety net hammock he frequently claims lulls retirees into “dependency and complacency.” See the recurring theme here?
“Right now about 60 percent of the American people get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes,” Ryan said. “So we’re going to a majority of takers versus makers in America and that will be tough to come back from that. They’ll be dependent on the government for their livelihoods [rather] than themselves.” Paul Ryan, 2010
This is why it’s impossible to believe that retirees were ever excluded in his “makers-takers” metric. If Rep. Ryan isn’t including the approximately 40 million seniors who receive Social Security and Medicare in his political equation, you simply can’t get to his 60% number. No matter how fuzzy the math or revisionist the history.
**Additional note. Not only is it impossible, Mother Jones provides this must-read break down of exactly where that 60% number comes from and the fact that is DOES include Social Security and Medicare, despite Congressman Ryan’s claims to the contrary.
Which leads us to another incredible bit of political sloganeering devoid of facts, in the same Politico interview:
“These programs, because of the way they were designed in the last century — which did not predict the aging of America, the baby boomer generation retiring at a tune of 10,000 people a day, and the cost of health care, which compounds these issues — are going bankrupt.”
Pretending that because Social Security was designed “last century” (which also means just fourteen years ago but we digress) the program is somehow archaic or inflexible not only revises history but completely ignores it. Social Security has been amended 30 times (1939, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2000) since it’s creation in response to changing needs and an evolving nation. In fact, the 1983 reforms raised the retirement age and payroll tax rates creating the Trust Fund surplus in advance of the baby boomers’ retirement. To claim that the United States didn’t “predict the aging of America” or know about the baby boom generation is absurd.
Social Security and Medicare aren’t going bankrupt. Medicare is suffering from the same high health costs hurting our economy system wide. We must reign in those costs but not just in Medicare. Medicare reform has already started with the addition of 8 years of solvency thanks to the Affordable Care Act (legislation Paul Ryan wants repealed). Social Security currently has a $2.7 trillion dollar surplus and even if nothing is done (which no one believes will happen) the program will have enough incoming payroll contributions to pay 75% of benefits come 2033. As the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan knows that is not bankruptcy.
This single interview shows just how far those who’ve set their sights on radical reforms to Social Security and Medicare will go to hide their true goals. We say:
Don’t Buy Their Lie…Save doesn’t mean Slash and Protect doesn’t mean Privatize.
Wall Street vs. Main Street: They Don’t Need their Social Security So Why Should You?
The Business Roundtable has presented the latest CEO/Wall Street attempt to convince Washington that slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits for the average American is the brave thing to do to cut our deficits. Their proposal is nothing more than a knock-off of the Bowles Simpson and the Ryan plan – two plans that have been soundly rejected by a majority of Americans in poll after poll and at the ballot box in November. Incredibly, this plan doubles-down and includes virtually every bad idea Washington has considered over the past decade all rolled into one proposal. In short, America’s CEO’s say raising the retirement age to 70, cutting benefits immediately for seniors, the disabled and veterans, turning Medicare into CouponCare while also raising the Medicare eligibility age, really isn’t too much to ask from millions of middle-class American families still reeling in this economy.
Now maybe if you were a millionaire or billionaire, you might think these were good ideas too. But most Americans are living well below what these CEOs earn, explaining why preserving and strengthening Social Security and Medicare benefits is so vitally important for the middle class. It’s clearly not a priority for America’s corporate class. But there’s also another explanation for this disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street. The dirty little secret the Business Roundtable doesn’t want to talk about is the vested interest that corporate and Wall Street CEO’s have in convincing Congress we can’t afford Social Security and Medicare.
The Business Roundtable is fighting to protect more than $1 trillion dollars in tax giveaways—paid for with working American’s tax dollars. Roundtable leaders portray their plan cutting benefits to millions of American families as “practical.” What’s “practical” about spending a trillion dollars in tax expenditures to pad corporate bottom lines and executive bonus checks while telling an average senior receiving only $14,000 a year in Social Security income to live on less? While they decry the high cost of providing healthcare to seniors and veterans they conveniently ignore the fact that tax code spending is up 60% since 1986 and is a bigger part of the budget than SS, Medicare, Medicaid or national defense.
The Business Roundtable’s so-called “practical” approach also shows that “shared sacrifice” really just means middle-class families should sacrifice so corporations and wealthy CEO’s can share the gains of a trillion dollar tax giveaway. If these captains of industry are truly concerned about the future of Social Security then why not why not lift the payroll cap and subject all income such as deferred compensation to FICA? Or how about limiting just two of those massive tax breaks for the wealthy & corporations, which saves much more than raising the retirement age?
· Limit some itemized deductions for high earners ($114 billion)
· Eliminate Corporate meals and entertainment write offs ($84 billion)
These two common sense changes save $198 billion over just 5 years while raising the retirement age to 70 saves $120 billion over the next decade.
Surely, writing off expensive business dinners for multimillionaires isn’t a higher priority for our nation than providing enough income so the average senior can afford to buy groceries.
This debate really is about America’s priorities for generations of middle-class families. Unfortunately, America’s CEO’s have made their priorities perfectly clear.
The False Prophets of Dysfunction and the Social Security “Crisis”
Kudos to Jared Bernstein for this spot-on analysis of how we got here, specifically why is Washington now consumed with self-inflicted “crisis” after “crisis”. We recommend you read the entire post but here is a sample:
“I’m reminded of a particularly pernicious rule of today’s politics: the self-fulfilling prophecy of dysfunction. Many of today’s conservatives run for office on a platform that government doesn’t work. And when they’re elected, they work their hardest to prove it true. They say, “we’re Greece!” when of course we’re nothing like Greece, then they threaten default to make us Greece.
This is an alarmingly simple ploy, but once you tune into it you see it everywhere. The prophets of dysfunction must convince us a spending crisis, an entitlement crisis, and debt crisis despite their factual inaccuracies. It there’s no crisis—if, as is clearly the case—our fiscal challenges can actually be met with reasonable policies involving analysis (e.g., squeezing inefficiencies out of health care delivery) and compromise (spending cuts and revenue increases), these hair-on-fire-slash-and-burners have no use.
An important job of progressives throughout history is the exposure of such false prophets. Of course, these prophets have huge profits riding on their ruse, so they won’t leave quietly. But we must expose them nevertheless. Our system is broken because a broken system works for the false prophets of dysfunction. It doesn’t work for the rest of us.”
Social Security Propaganda Advice for the GOP: Say Save When You Really Mean Slash
GOP Pollster and spinmeister, Frank Luntz, is convinced the Republican party doesn’t have a problem with their ideas, just in being too honest when talking about them. Luntz wrote an Oped for the Washington Post this weekend that provides an incredibly cynical glimpse into the GOP propaganda strategy on Social Security and Medicare. Basically, he says conservatives should avoid telling Americans the whole story about the various plans to cut benefits, privatize or shift costs for seniors:
“Instead of entitlement reform or controlling the growth of Medicare and Social Security, talk about how to save and strengthen these programs so they are there when voters need them. After all, they paid for them.” Frank Luntz, GOP Pollster
That’s right, they do pay for them — which is why the vast majority of Americans do not support cutting Social Security or Medicare benefits to pay down the deficit. However, rather than address this massive disconnect between how the average American would address our fiscal mess and how Republicans would, the Luntz strategy is to cloak their plans in poll-tested propaganda.
Orwellian double-speak offered by conservatives who say “save” when they mean “slash” and “preserve” when they mean “privatize” isn’t new. It was also the cornerstone of the Republican campaign against healthcare reform where the GOP continues to mislead seniors into believing the Affordable Care Act cut their Medicare benefits, even though the opposite is true.
“Do not say: ‘entitlement reform,’ ‘privatization,’ ‘every option is on the table,’ … Do say: ‘strengthen,’ ‘secure,’ ‘save,’ ‘preserve, ‘protect.’” NRCC Medicare Memo
So, House Republicans will gather at their annual retreat this week — and if they take their pollster’s advice — crafting ways to ensure they don’t tell the American people exactly what they have planned for Social Security and Medicare and the millions of families those programs serve.
Social Security Has Nothing to Do with the Deficit – Ronald Reagan
Here’s a little blast from the past for Congressional Republicans who’ve decided cutting Social Security must be a part of any deficit debate. It’s yet another reminder of how many Americans the current GOP have abandoned in it’s embrace of Tea Party politics — including the “Gipper.”
Paul Ryan’s Fuzzy Medicare Math and Revisionist Social Security History
Rep. Paul Ryan is apparently feeling the sting after hearing his infamous “makers and takers” philosophy referenced in the President’s inaugural address.
“The commitments we make to each other through Medicare, Medicaid and social security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers, they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” President Barack Obama Inaugural address
Clearly Congressman Ryan is hoping some revisionist history combined with fuzzy math will gloss over his well known antipathy for Social Security and Medicare (trying to clean the slate for 2016?). The fuzzy math part of his strategy came in his incredible “maker-taker” rework in an interview with Politico after the inauguration:
“When the president does kind of a switcheroo like that, what he’s trying to say is that we are maligning these programs that people have earned throughout their working lives,” he said. “So it’s kind of a convenient twist of terms to try and shadowbox a straw man in order to win an argument by default…No one is suggesting that what we call our earned entitlements, entitlements you pay for like payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security, are putting you in a taker category,” Ryan said. “No one suggests that whatsoever. The concern that people like me have been raising is we do not want to encourage a dependency culture.” Rep. Paul Ryan, January 22, 2013
Hmmmm. There’s that “dependency culture” again, another favored Ryan meme along with the safety net hammock he frequently claims lulls retirees into “dependency and complacency.” See the recurring theme here?
“Right now about 60 percent of the American people get more benefits in dollar value from the federal government than they pay back in taxes,” Ryan said. “So we’re going to a majority of takers versus makers in America and that will be tough to come back from that. They’ll be dependent on the government for their livelihoods [rather] than themselves.” Paul Ryan, 2010
This is why it’s impossible to believe that retirees were ever excluded in his “makers-takers” metric. If Rep. Ryan isn’t including the approximately 40 million seniors who receive Social Security and Medicare in his political equation, you simply can’t get to his 60% number. No matter how fuzzy the math or revisionist the history.
**Additional note. Not only is it impossible, Mother Jones provides this must-read break down of exactly where that 60% number comes from and the fact that is DOES include Social Security and Medicare, despite Congressman Ryan’s claims to the contrary.
Which leads us to another incredible bit of political sloganeering devoid of facts, in the same Politico interview:
“These programs, because of the way they were designed in the last century — which did not predict the aging of America, the baby boomer generation retiring at a tune of 10,000 people a day, and the cost of health care, which compounds these issues — are going bankrupt.”
Pretending that because Social Security was designed “last century” (which also means just fourteen years ago but we digress) the program is somehow archaic or inflexible not only revises history but completely ignores it. Social Security has been amended 30 times (1939, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2000) since it’s creation in response to changing needs and an evolving nation. In fact, the 1983 reforms raised the retirement age and payroll tax rates creating the Trust Fund surplus in advance of the baby boomers’ retirement. To claim that the United States didn’t “predict the aging of America” or know about the baby boom generation is absurd.
Social Security and Medicare aren’t going bankrupt. Medicare is suffering from the same high health costs hurting our economy system wide. We must reign in those costs but not just in Medicare. Medicare reform has already started with the addition of 8 years of solvency thanks to the Affordable Care Act (legislation Paul Ryan wants repealed). Social Security currently has a $2.7 trillion dollar surplus and even if nothing is done (which no one believes will happen) the program will have enough incoming payroll contributions to pay 75% of benefits come 2033. As the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan knows that is not bankruptcy.
This single interview shows just how far those who’ve set their sights on radical reforms to Social Security and Medicare will go to hide their true goals. We say:
Don’t Buy Their Lie…Save doesn’t mean Slash and Protect doesn’t mean Privatize.
Wall Street vs. Main Street: They Don’t Need their Social Security So Why Should You?
The Business Roundtable has presented the latest CEO/Wall Street attempt to convince Washington that slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits for the average American is the brave thing to do to cut our deficits. Their proposal is nothing more than a knock-off of the Bowles Simpson and the Ryan plan – two plans that have been soundly rejected by a majority of Americans in poll after poll and at the ballot box in November. Incredibly, this plan doubles-down and includes virtually every bad idea Washington has considered over the past decade all rolled into one proposal. In short, America’s CEO’s say raising the retirement age to 70, cutting benefits immediately for seniors, the disabled and veterans, turning Medicare into CouponCare while also raising the Medicare eligibility age, really isn’t too much to ask from millions of middle-class American families still reeling in this economy.
Now maybe if you were a millionaire or billionaire, you might think these were good ideas too. But most Americans are living well below what these CEOs earn, explaining why preserving and strengthening Social Security and Medicare benefits is so vitally important for the middle class. It’s clearly not a priority for America’s corporate class. But there’s also another explanation for this disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street. The dirty little secret the Business Roundtable doesn’t want to talk about is the vested interest that corporate and Wall Street CEO’s have in convincing Congress we can’t afford Social Security and Medicare.
The Business Roundtable is fighting to protect more than $1 trillion dollars in tax giveaways—paid for with working American’s tax dollars. Roundtable leaders portray their plan cutting benefits to millions of American families as “practical.” What’s “practical” about spending a trillion dollars in tax expenditures to pad corporate bottom lines and executive bonus checks while telling an average senior receiving only $14,000 a year in Social Security income to live on less? While they decry the high cost of providing healthcare to seniors and veterans they conveniently ignore the fact that tax code spending is up 60% since 1986 and is a bigger part of the budget than SS, Medicare, Medicaid or national defense.
The Business Roundtable’s so-called “practical” approach also shows that “shared sacrifice” really just means middle-class families should sacrifice so corporations and wealthy CEO’s can share the gains of a trillion dollar tax giveaway. If these captains of industry are truly concerned about the future of Social Security then why not why not lift the payroll cap and subject all income such as deferred compensation to FICA? Or how about limiting just two of those massive tax breaks for the wealthy & corporations, which saves much more than raising the retirement age?
· Limit some itemized deductions for high earners ($114 billion)
· Eliminate Corporate meals and entertainment write offs ($84 billion)
These two common sense changes save $198 billion over just 5 years while raising the retirement age to 70 saves $120 billion over the next decade.
Surely, writing off expensive business dinners for multimillionaires isn’t a higher priority for our nation than providing enough income so the average senior can afford to buy groceries.
This debate really is about America’s priorities for generations of middle-class families. Unfortunately, America’s CEO’s have made their priorities perfectly clear.
The False Prophets of Dysfunction and the Social Security “Crisis”
Kudos to Jared Bernstein for this spot-on analysis of how we got here, specifically why is Washington now consumed with self-inflicted “crisis” after “crisis”. We recommend you read the entire post but here is a sample:
“I’m reminded of a particularly pernicious rule of today’s politics: the self-fulfilling prophecy of dysfunction. Many of today’s conservatives run for office on a platform that government doesn’t work. And when they’re elected, they work their hardest to prove it true. They say, “we’re Greece!” when of course we’re nothing like Greece, then they threaten default to make us Greece.
This is an alarmingly simple ploy, but once you tune into it you see it everywhere. The prophets of dysfunction must convince us a spending crisis, an entitlement crisis, and debt crisis despite their factual inaccuracies. It there’s no crisis—if, as is clearly the case—our fiscal challenges can actually be met with reasonable policies involving analysis (e.g., squeezing inefficiencies out of health care delivery) and compromise (spending cuts and revenue increases), these hair-on-fire-slash-and-burners have no use.
An important job of progressives throughout history is the exposure of such false prophets. Of course, these prophets have huge profits riding on their ruse, so they won’t leave quietly. But we must expose them nevertheless. Our system is broken because a broken system works for the false prophets of dysfunction. It doesn’t work for the rest of us.”
Social Security Propaganda Advice for the GOP: Say Save When You Really Mean Slash
GOP Pollster and spinmeister, Frank Luntz, is convinced the Republican party doesn’t have a problem with their ideas, just in being too honest when talking about them. Luntz wrote an Oped for the Washington Post this weekend that provides an incredibly cynical glimpse into the GOP propaganda strategy on Social Security and Medicare. Basically, he says conservatives should avoid telling Americans the whole story about the various plans to cut benefits, privatize or shift costs for seniors:
“Instead of entitlement reform or controlling the growth of Medicare and Social Security, talk about how to save and strengthen these programs so they are there when voters need them. After all, they paid for them.” Frank Luntz, GOP Pollster
That’s right, they do pay for them — which is why the vast majority of Americans do not support cutting Social Security or Medicare benefits to pay down the deficit. However, rather than address this massive disconnect between how the average American would address our fiscal mess and how Republicans would, the Luntz strategy is to cloak their plans in poll-tested propaganda.
Orwellian double-speak offered by conservatives who say “save” when they mean “slash” and “preserve” when they mean “privatize” isn’t new. It was also the cornerstone of the Republican campaign against healthcare reform where the GOP continues to mislead seniors into believing the Affordable Care Act cut their Medicare benefits, even though the opposite is true.
“Do not say: ‘entitlement reform,’ ‘privatization,’ ‘every option is on the table,’ … Do say: ‘strengthen,’ ‘secure,’ ‘save,’ ‘preserve, ‘protect.’” NRCC Medicare Memo
So, House Republicans will gather at their annual retreat this week — and if they take their pollster’s advice — crafting ways to ensure they don’t tell the American people exactly what they have planned for Social Security and Medicare and the millions of families those programs serve.
Social Security Has Nothing to Do with the Deficit – Ronald Reagan
Here’s a little blast from the past for Congressional Republicans who’ve decided cutting Social Security must be a part of any deficit debate. It’s yet another reminder of how many Americans the current GOP have abandoned in it’s embrace of Tea Party politics — including the “Gipper.”