Granny Bird Award: Paul Ryan

Today's Granny Bird Award, one given from time to time to those who actively seek to harm or impair the rights of elders, goes to Rep. Paul Ryan (Asshole-WI) for his proposed 2015 budget, re-introduced in the House Of Representatives just in time for 2014 campaign purposes.

Yesterday, I examined his proposed cuts to the safety net, with an emphasis on Medicare. Today Granny Bird wants to point out his deceptions and misrepresentations with respect to Social Security.  Michael Hiltzik quite nicely assists in that endeavor:

...what concerns us here is his description of the Social Security trust fund, which currently holds close to $3 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, all purchased with payroll tax income paid by working men and women since 1983.

The idea of building up this trust fund was to bank excess tax revenues against the looming wave of baby boomer retirements, which has now begun. But the trust fund is still growing, because Social Security's income streams--the payroll tax, interest on its bonds, and revenues from income taxation of benefits--still are sufficient to cover current benefits, and then some.

Ryan wants you to think different. Here's the passage in question, from page 66 of his plan.

"Any value in the balances in the Social Security Trust Fund is derived from dubious government accounting. The trust fund is not a real savings account. From 1983 to 2010, it collected more Social Security taxes than it paid out in Social Security benefits. But the government borrowed all of these surpluses and spent them on other government programs unrelated to Social Security. The Trust Fund holds Treasury securities, but the ability to redeem these securities is completely dependent on the Treasury’s ability to raise money through taxes or borrowing."  ...

...The money has been invested in U.S. Treasury securities, just as you might do by purchasing Series EE savings bonds, or TIPS. Why do people invest in T-bonds? Because they're the safest securities in the world. The U.S. has never, ever defaulted on them (although the Tea Party wing of the GOP seems to think that would be a good idea). The money isn't invested in corporate securities or anything else, because Congress hasn't allowed that.

The Social Security trust fund's bonds are backed by exactly the same commitment of the U.S.' "full faith and credit" as any other Treasury security. Keep your eye on that ball, because Ryan is going to try to palm it.

When one buys a T-bond, one is effectively lending the money to the government, which then uses it to do things. So, yes, Ryan is correct in stating that "the government borrowed all of these surpluses and spent them on other government programs unrelated to Social Security."

Right. On national defense. Two wars. Construction of roads, school buildings, courthouses. On the salaries of congressmen like Rep. Ryan. What of it?

Was this money wasted? Hardly. The U.S. economy has more than doubled in size (adjusted for inflation) over that time, in significant part because of the infrastructure and services provided by government--including with that borrowed money.

...there's no "dubious government accounting" involved here--the dubious accounting is all Ryan's.
The trust fund is indeed a real savings account, involving deposits and interest. Yes, the government borrowed the money, and it has paid interest on it every year (duly recorded and published, down to the last dollar, in the annual reports of the Social Security trustees).

And yes, "the ability to redeem these securities is completely dependent on the Treasury’s ability to raise money through taxes or borrowing." What Ryan doesn't say is that the Treasury's ability to raise taxes and borrowing is effectively unlimited.

The most important factor is the one that people like Ryan want you to forget: The money in the Social Security trust fund came directly or indirectly from the payroll taxes paid by millions of American workers--100% of it. It was paid by workers in the trust that the government would pay it back. Paul Ryan is hinting, pretty strongly, that he doesn't want to pay it back.   [Emphasis added]

I quoted the column extensively because Hiltzik's argument required it and I'd recommend you read it all.  His point (and mine) is that Ryan and his rich benefactors would be happier if we took our money and paid it into Wall Street brokers' hands.  And once we do that, we should just die.

Paul Ryan never met a rich campaign donor he didn't like and a "taker" elder he did.

How long, O Lord.  How Long.

 

Say What? [Updated]

(Cartoon by Paul Fell and found here.  Click on image to enlarge.)

The Los Angeles Times quite surprised me by printing opinion columns on the Tennessee VW plant union vote on two consecutive days.  Both articles take essentially the same stance: against state Republicans who are appalled at the company's actually encouraging not only the vote, but also a vote for the union representation

From Michael Hiltzig's 2/12/14 column:

Reading the remarks of the state's GOP politicians is like a trip through cloud-cuckoo-land. Here's a statement sent to the Detroit Free Press by State Sen. Bo Watson of Chattanooga: "Volkswagen has promoted a campaign that has been unfair, unbalanced and, quite frankly, un-American in the traditions of American labor campaigns .... Should the workers choose to be represented by the United Auto Workers, then I believe additional incentives for expansion will have a very tough time passing the Tennessee Senate."

Apparently the "American" style of labor campaign is one in which the employer moves heaven and earth to intimidate workers and suppress their legal right to collective bargaining, not one in which the employer sees concrete benefits in a union presence on the factory floor.

The Republicans appear to be afraid that the UAW vote will eat into Tennessee's hard-earned as a right-to-work (read: anti-union) state. A UAW victory at Volkswagen, moreover, would be its first at a foreign-owned auto plant in the country. The politicians have expressed fears that other manufacturing companies will shun Tennessee if the UAW cracks open the door. [Emphasis added]

From Scott Martelle's 2/13/14 op-ed piece:

Thursday is the second of three days of a union-organizing vote at Volkswagen’s Tennessee auto assembly plant, and it’s being tracked like a congressional special election. Is it a bellwether for the state of modern labor? Or is it a one-off that says nothing of significance beyond the confines of the VW factory floor?

It’s a bit of both. The vote has attracted an extraordinary amount of outside interest and pressure, including misleading public billboards, bizarre claims on local talk-radio stations and a general frothing from the anti-union right that worker-management cooperation is the first step toward Stalinism. The organizing vote also seems to have brought out the worst in some Republican state politicians, who have threatened future financial help for VW projects if the United Auto Workers wins the election. As my colleague Jon Healey wrote Wednesday, that is an inappropriate threat.

But I go further: The politicians are wrong to oppose this (especially those who usually condemn government meddling in private business; why are they meddling now?). As is the Grover Norquist-led Americans for Tax Reform, which has been spending heavily to try to persuade the VW workers to remain unorganized (it’s mystifying what a private labor agreement has to do with tax reform). ... [Emphasis added]

The scramble by Republicans to thwart the vote for UAW representation by threatening the employer is appalling and reeks of the smell of fear:  not that other employers will stay away from Tennessee (a right-to-work-for-minimum-wage-and-no-benefits-or-protection state), but that workers just might catch on to the GOP's anti-worker stance and begin electing Democrats who will more adequately represent them.

Horrors!

Update:

The 712-626 vote (53%-47%) against unionization at the German automaker’s three-year-old factory in Chattanooga is a setback for UAW because labor experts had thought Volkswagen gave the union its best shot of setting a precedent to make inroads with transplants such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Nissan.  [Emphasis added]

I guess the GOP's interference worked, although this latest article does indicate the UAW will be appealing the results.

What a shame for Tennessee workers.

How Amusing ... Not!

(Cartoon by Lee Judge/Kansas City Star (1/17/14) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge.)

Leave it to the Republicans to find a new way to raise money, at the expense of the Democrats, of course.

From the L.A. Times:

The National Republican Congressional Committee bought up hundreds of URLs ahead of the 2014 election cycle and has created nearly 20 websites appearing to support Democratic candidates in all but the small print, a spokesman for the campaign confirmed Thursday.

The websites include donation forms that accept credit cards and encourage viewers to contribute up to $500, but instead of money going to the Democratic candidates, it goes to the NRCC. ...

But NRCC spokesman Daniel Scarpinato defended the committee’s strategy, calling the Democratic candidates’ official websites “deceptive” for omitting support for President Obama’s policies. He also dismissed concerns that the sites were misleading, characterizing the language contained in the websites as “clearly negative.”

“I think they are crystal clear about the perspective they are coming from,” he said. “And the Democrats don’t want this information out there. Therefore, they’re freaking out about them.” [Emphasis added]

The Republicans claim they have violated no FEC rules (although that is disputable, as the article points out).  The GOP simply went out and bought the website urls from the internet authority before the candidates got around to it.  In addition, claim Republicans, if one actually reads the material on the bogus site it is clear that it is asking for donations to the NRCC and not to the candidate whose picture appears.  In other words, if Democratic voters don't read the fine print they should be ripped off.

Watergate it ain't.  But sleazy and slimy?  Absolutely.

I think the GOP must be more than a little nervous over the upcoming elections.  I sure do hope so.

The Poor Are Still With Us

 

Cartoon by Lee Judge and published January 7, 2014.

 

The Los Angeles Times has a pretty good column on the War of Poverty and the claims that it was a failure and was/is a waste of government money.  Ann Stevens and Marianne Page take issue with

that nonsense and provide statistics to back their thesis up.

 

"First, careful studies confirm that many of the safety net programs initiated with the War on Poverty, such as Head Start, WIC and food stamps (now called SNAP), make a big difference in the lives of the poor. Recent research by economists Hilary Hoynes, Douglas Almond and Diane Schanzenbach shows, for example, that the introduction of the food stamp program improved infant health, especially in high poverty areas where participation rates were highest. Similar benefits have been found for WIC, and for cash-based anti-poverty programs. Gordon Dahl and Lance Lochner have shown that increases in the size of the earned income tax credit are associated with improvements in low-income children's achievement test scores.

These safety net benefits go unrecognized because our official poverty statistics do not measure such noncash or after-tax benefits, nor do they track real outcomes, like improvements in health or education. But the benefits are there, and they need to be taken into account, especially when cuts are being proposed."  (Emphasis added)

Until the people who keep the statistics start paying attention to those government programs and the real-life effect on people's lives, those in the GOP and the DINOs will continue to justify the heartless moves they've been making (e.g., not extending unemployment benefits).