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Hillary Clinton on Social Security Expansion: Words are Wind. A Cold Wind.
Hillary Clinton on Social Security Expansion: Words are Wind. A Cold Wind.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Social Security, the social insurance program first implemented by Bismarck in 1889, was described by then-Emperor Wilhelm I as follows: “Those who are disabled from work by age and invalid[ism] have a well-grounded claim to care from the state.” Social Security was implemented in the United States by FDR in 1935, and we generally formulate Wilhelm’s “claim to care” as the wish that elders should be enabled to retire in dignity (in the vulgate, without having to eat cat food). Of course, Social Security policy does not only affect all-too-soon-to-be old codgers like myself, but all citizens who’ve entered the labor force and paid the payroll tax, and all citizens who are making life decisions today, based on what their for future retirement will be. So Social Security policy has a huge impact, society-wide. (We should also note that a Republican budgetary Easter egg means that Social Security benefits will probably become a major issue in Congress in late 2016.)
Here’s the baseline for the left on Social Security. From The Nation:
With boomers retiring without pensions or adequate savings, progressives have proposed expanding Social Security benefits …. Obama, by contrast, has proposed cutting Social Security benefits as part of a “grand bargain” with the Republicans on deficit reduction, a position greatly appreciated on Wall Street. Clinton, like all Democratic candidates, will promise to protect Social Security, but will she support expanding it?
Let’s start with the caveat that with Hillary Clinton, as with Bill Clinton, you’ve always got to parse the words. Here’s a dryly hilarious passage from the Wall Street Journal:
Corrections & Amplifications:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said that when it comes to fixing Social Security, “putting everything on the table is not an answer. Raising the retirement age is not an answer. Cutting benefits is not an answer.” This article incorrectly summarizes her as saying cutting benefits or raising the eligibility age were “off the table.”
(You have to read that passage a few times to see that although cutting benefits and raising the retirement age each by themselves might not be “an” answer, taken together they might be “the” answer. See how easy?) Anyhow, one shouldn’t allow the evident glee the Journal’s writer took in composing that correction to detract from the fact that you always have to parse the words of Clintons very, very carefully. They are, after all, like Obama, lawyers trained at top schools. ................(more)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/hillary-clinton-on-social-security-expansion-words-are-wind-a-cold-wind.html
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