The latest from TPM False Equivalence Watch (TM).
Today from CBS News …
Is there a Social Security crisis? Mr. Bush says yes, the Democrats say no. They say the system as is can deliver the promised benefits until at least 2042. And they say minor revenue increases and benefits made soon can safeguard Social Security for much longer. They say the “crisis” is made up so the administration can start experimenting with private Social Security accounts.
And THAT, the Democrats say, is a crisis. They believe the administrationâs proposal to offer optional, voluntary private accounts would start an inexorable avalanche on the slippery slope of privatizing Social Security, of taking away government guaranteed payments to old people. They think itâs an evil plot by evil-doers. A crisis. Thatâs their crisis-mongering.
On the facts, the Democrats are right to say that Social Security doesnât pose an immediate crisis. But in defining the issues supporting an aging population so narrowly, the Democrats are every bit as disingenuous as the administration. When you put Social Security on top of Medicare, on top of rising medical costs and in the context of a shrinking workforce and expanding elderly population, you have something pretty close to a crisis. But itâs not one either party is talking much about.
Nice try.
Let’s address two points. If President Bush is whipping up a phony crisis, as he did during the lead up to Iraq, to shred the social safety net which has made poverty among the elderly close to a thing of the past and provides financial security in the face <$Ad$> of premature death, disability and other blows of fate at other points in life, that’s a bad thing that should be fought at every opportunity. Opposing it simply cannot be put on the same moral footing as perpetrating it.
On the other hand, if the Democrats are wrong, and there really is a dire crisis, which they are ignoring for political reasons, then they’re in the wrong.
The point is that you cannot duck the moral question by ignoring the factual question, which is what the author seems intent on doing in this case, thus creating the standard ‘they all do it’ moral equivalence.
Then there’s the issue of Medicare and spiralling health care costs. The funding challenges facing Medicare really are far more acute than those facing Social Security. But they are also qualitatively different. For all the demographic challenges facing Social Security, the costs it is meant to cover are fundamentally stable — factored against inflation. What are they? Rents, food, the basic costs of living, etc. It is in the case of health care where, for all the arguments about frivolous lawsuits or greedy drug companies, we face the basic ‘problem’ of an expanding array life-saving and life-extending technologies that cost money.
But Medicare and health care costs are a different and in many respects distinct issue. The fact that the president lies about Social Security while ignoring the more pressing challenges facing Medicare should be marked against him, not the Democrats.
And in any case, what sense does it make to pillory those who deny Social Security is in crisis just because when you combine it together with a bunch of other issues, which are in some ways related, all of them together may almost constitute a crisis? This is rather like saying, Iraq is no crisis. But when you combine Iraq with North Korea and Iran, non-state-terrorism, a possible global resource shortage in the next century and global warming, all together it’s pretty close to a crisis.
Maybe so. But who cares? It’s a non-sequitur. The president has forced a debate on Social Security — not the long-term fiscal outlook of the country or rising health care costs. And while Social Security, as a major government expense, is related to both, the program’s structure — which is what President Bush wants changed — is distinct from each. And if all that weren’t enough the president’s proposals don’t address this broader array of problems — at least not anymore than abolishing Social Security clears up problems tied to its funding.
It is almost as if the author cannot get himself to bite the factual bullet of who’s crisis mongering and who’s not. So he cobbles together another crisis to make up for the insufficiencies of the one the president is flogging in order to find one the Democrats are ignoring, even though this debate and changes to this program are what the president is forcing on the country.
