Third Way has been trying to privatize Social Security since 1990s. This is not playing chess. [View all]
This is for real. Our Democratic leaders have been inundated with propaganda since the late 1980s when the DLC was formed.
There is no way now that President Obama needs to be concerned about following through on his wish to use the social safety nets to achieve a "Grand Bargain". Only those up for re-election need to be concerned.
Seniors are nervous now that both parties are letting them down. I think that though Obama does not have to worry about re-election.....those running next year most certainly do. And that's a shame for many of those who really care.
Jon Cowan, the Third Way president, started writing stuff about this long ago. One article he addressed to Grandpa and Grandma, asking them to give up some of their entitlements so their grandchildren would not have to suffer.
Baloney. But many Democrats have listened.
1993 An Appeal To Grandma And Grandpa by Jon Cowan now Third Way president.
Dear Grandma and Grandpa:
We write to ask for your help. We're in a financial mess, and unless everyone in our family gets together to fix the problem, we're heading for "economic and fiscal catastrophe." That's not a phrase we picked up on MTV-it's from a recent U.S. government report on the budget deficit.
..."We are not ungrateful. We respect and value the sacrifices you've made for our country and have no desire to take money away from those in need. But our generation is in trouble. We were educated in a collapsing school system. Our incomes and skill levels are lower than any previous generation-by the year 2000 over one-third of younger Americans will be living in poverty. And we will be the first Americans to inherit a lower standard of living than our parents.
We're not asking that your generation solve all our problems. And there certainly are many other programs that also must be cut to get the deficit under control. But Social Security must be considered, just like everything else in the budget.
But that's not all he wrote. Jon Cowan was a very busy little conservative bee through the 90s. Still is.
In 1995 he called for privatizing Social Security.
Op ed from Third Way prez Cowan calling to privatize Social Security.
Despite the truth about this imminent collapse of the system, Senate Democrats recently killed the balanced-budget amendment with claims that it left Social Security vulnerable to budget-balancing. And House Republicans swore in the 1994 elections that they'd never touch the program. Why this doublespeak from both parties? A simple political calculation: Older Americans vote, and Generation X doesn't.
Unfortunately for America, this lie-to-get-elected approach is disastrous for our long-term fiscal outlook and will squander any hope of repairing the system before the crisis strikes early in the next millennium.
The time has come to reinvent Social Security based on a "cut and privatize" approach that will be fair to all age groups.
He then puts forth 3 principles to follow, one of which is to lower our expectations about the future benefits.
He also offered to "give workers the option of putting their money into private pension programs that offer far higher returns and sounder prospects than today's Social Security system."
President Obama has put benefit cuts on the table willingly, though they are calling it other stuff like Chained CPI.
Enough Democrats will go along with it to get it to happen. Unfortunately the end result will be a lot of anger and frustration next year when election time rolls around. He is not being fair at all to our more progressive Democrats.
It is not chess, it is a deliberate process planned through the years by our Democratic think tanks.
It is playing with peoples' lives and stressing them out. Most of us thought the safety nets would be untouchable if we kept Democrats in power. But the President just warned his own party's Senators about not cooperating.
That is not playing chess.
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