Quotes Archive: Social Security
"That is the strange thing with the Washington school. Because they think that – for ordinary people – pain and unemployment and other awful things shall stimulate them to take risks. But for those better off, it is the opposite."
Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson on the odd way American conservatives want the poor to take pain and risks like privatizing Social Security while Bush's cronies get tax cuts and bailouts.
"Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.
Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population."
Paul Krugman warning about the propaganda to sell privatization of Social Security on false premises.
"There is no cash in the so-called trust fund. Washington has already spent that money and left IOUs behind. These IOUs will have to be redeemed with those trillions of dollars in new taxes from current workers....But if you are wary of putting your money in the stock market, there are hundreds of other financial instruments you could buy, including government bonds."
Former US Senator Rod Grams utterly missing the irony in his editorial: he dismissed government bonds in the Social Security trust fund as IOUs, then recommended them as a private investment.
"Oh, my God. The White House has made a lot of Republicans walk the plank on this. Now it sounds as if they are sawing off the board."
Anonymous GOP political strategist reacting to the new official Bush line that private accounts won't fix Social Security's financial problems.
"The argument for dramatic change in Social Security is clear:
The promise of secure retirements is a 'hoax.' Taxes paid by workers are 'wasted' by the government rather than prudently invested. And 'the so-called reserve fund ... is no reserve at all' because it contains nothing but government IOUs.
President Bush? No, Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon and his party's platform in 1936."
Steven Thomma describing the decades'long attempt of conservatives to undermine Social Security with false attacks for purely ideological reasons.
"Many employees believe that the president and this agency are using scare tactics to promote private accounts."
Deborah Fredericksen, long time employee of the Social Security Administration, describe Bush's attempt to use employees for the propaganda campaign and the trust fund to fund it.
"Until very recently, I believed, as most of my generation still does, that Social Security was facing a crisis. ... I was -- and the bulk of young people still are -- the victim of a massive fraud, perpetrated by Social Security abolition advocates and unfortunately re-enforced from time to time by liberals seeking an argument against Republican tax cuts."
Matthew Yglesias, "There is No Social-Security Crisis", The American Prospect Online, Dec 21, 2004.
''I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in, with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security.''
George Bush just last month at a confidential luncheon (less than he thought, apparently) for big wig supporters. This was just before he began denying he had any intention of privatizing Social Security.




