Bill Halter has a new ad in the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary runoff, touting his opposition to privatizing Social Security and accusing incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln of voting to cut the program.
The ad features friends and family members of Halter, most notably his father Bill Halter, Sr. “Bill fought Bush’s plan to privatize it,” says one of his friends. “And Bill will never do what Blanche Lincoln did,” another friend says, followed by another: “Vote to cut Medicare and Social Security.”
The ad’s press release includes a speech that Halter, a former Deputy Commissioner of Social Security, gave in 2002 while stumping for Mark Pryor’s Senate campaign: “If you divert a sixth of the Social Security payroll tax into private accounts and out of the Social Security trust fund, you’ve just created more than a trillion dollar hole in the trust fund.”
Upon further request from TPMDC, the Halter campaign cited a speech that Halter gave in 2005, during the big political battle when Bush made his really serious attempt to privatize the program, at an event held by an anti-privatization group: “As we celebrate 70 years of Social Security, let’s reaffirm our bonds to one another. Let’s rededicate ourselves to making the next 70 years of Social Security just as strong or stronger than the last 70. Let’s renew Americans’ promise to each other, that together, united, we will always be stronger than we are alone.”
For the attack against Lincoln, the Halter campaign’s press release cites a vote that Lincoln made in 1994, when she was in the House of Representatives, for a budget austerity proposal that would have set caps on all entitlement spending, and would have not exempted Social Security from automatic cuts in the absence of Congress passing reconciliation legislation. The proposal did not pass.
It should be noted that in 2005, Lincoln briefly joined Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) effort to forge a bipartisan proposal on Social Security. Ultimately, she came out strongly against privatization: “I’m opposed to what the president presumably wants to do. It puts in jeopardy a program that is vital to the people of Arkansas and is misleading to the young people about what they’re going to end up with.”
The TPM Poll Average gives Lincoln 45.2%, Halter 45.1%. The runoff will be held on June 8.
