David Koch, one of the brothers that help fund major Republican initiatives, ran and helped fund a presidential campaign in 1980 that called Social Security “The Ultimate Pyramid Scheme.”
That’s according to a new report in Buzzfeed that highlights Democrats’ research that Koch was the vice presidential nominee and main driver of the presidential campaign of Libertarian candidate Ed Clark. Social Security is called the “ultimate pyramid scheme” in Clark’s campaign book, titled A New Beginning.
The book also argues that Social Security should completely be abolished.
“The injustice of Social Security cries out for reform,” Clark wrote. He continued “The system is collapsing under its own weight and it is bringing us all down with it. We must start removing it from our backs.”
Social Security should be replaced with a new “a new system based on voluntary, cooperative, decentralized market institutions instead of the current centralized and bureaucratic system.”
As Buzzfeed notes, Koch was the major driving force behind the Clark campaign.
“They liked me, I guess,” Koch said in an interview with New York magazine in 1980. “But obviously, my ability to give unrestricted funds was a major consideration.”
Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) in North Carolina in particular has been the target of a continuous barrage of attack ads by the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity. Democrats now, according to Buzzfeed, are using A New Beginning as the beginning of an attack strategy that treats the Koch brothers as candidates. They’re pushing opposition research against the Kochs in a style that campaigns usually use against another candidate.
Democrats have made a point of attacking Koch and his brother this cycle. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has repeatedly attacked the Koch brothers as the driving force behind a number of GOP policies, most recently House Republicans’ new budget proposal.
