Noting the media’s trivial pursuit of rising star Rick Santorum, my colleague Erika Fry has called for more substantive reporting on the candidate’s past and policy visions. I say “amen,” and applaud the fact the AP at least devoted a somewhat lengthy story to his call for immediate cuts to Social Security benefits. “We can’t wait 10 years,” Santorum told a New Hampshire crowd, and the AP reported he was “looking to set himself apart from his Republican rivals” who believe in a gradual phased-in approach to cutting Social Security that doesn’t take money away from those already receiving benefits.
The AP made an important point here, reporting “politicians typically suggest phase-in periods of up to a decade when broaching the topic of changing Social Security to avoid grievous consequences from angering older voters.” And late in the piece it laid out snippets of where the other candidates stand on Social Security.
Santorum argued that everyone must sacrifice now because the nation’s “house is on fire,” the cause of which, he said, is the soaring federal debt. In Ft. Dodge, Iowa, last week, the candidate argued: “We need to change benefits for everybody now…. Is everybody going to take a little bit of a hit? No, but a lot of people will,” he said. The AP reported this, but what he was saying on the stump got little attention then. How can Santorum want to change benefits for everyone, without everyone taking a hit? I’m confused; readers would be too.
The AP doesn’t call out that contradiction but does say Santorum wants tighter restrictions on benefits for upper-income people and says changes should include a higher eligibility age to qualify for benefits. The age for receiving full benefits soon rises to age sixty-seven. Does Santorum mean Americans should wait longer than age sixty-seven? Specifics please!That’s the policy vision Fry said was missing so far. If the electorate is being asked to sacrifice, at least they should know how they’re supposed to do that.
According to the AP, Santorum “did not offer details” about his Social Security plan but said wealthy retirees’ proportionate benefits should be trimmed further. What does wealthy mean in his lexicon? It’s good to know he did not offer details. But a better idea as the campaign progresses is to ask him such a question point blank and report his answer. If a slippery candidate doesn’t dot the Is and cross the Ts, the press surely should.
Santorum is using the same Big Lie technique of other candidates (and the instigators of the Tea Party.) It is to make extreme but vague statements to attract angry, ignorant supporters, then if attempts are made to pin him down, exploit the further attention. His stridency and extreme sanctimoniousness are as repellant as Perry's careless senility and Gingrich's demagoguery.
#1 Posted by Robert Cogan, CJR on Mon 9 Jan 2012 at 10:01 PM
Trudy
you are on the right side, and you probably don't go nearly far enough to show that Santorum is raving mad or just lying through his teeth, but i was a bit puzzled by this:
"The AP reported, though, that Santorum said he didn’t favor higher taxes or more deficit spending to shore up Social Security. Did that mean he supports Obama’s payroll tax holiday and making it permanent? Dot connection, please! "
The payroll tax holiday DOES "favor" higher taxes or more deficit spending "to shore up Social Security. That's what's wrong with it... aside from the fact that it turns SS into welfare which is bad, bad, bad.
The fact is that Social Security has always paid for itself. That is the workers have paid for their own benefits. SS has nothing to do with "the deficit"... or did not have until the payroll tax holiday.
And it doesn't need to be "shored up." A payroll tax increase of one half of one tenth of one percent per year will enable SS to pay all "promised" benefits for the forseeable future (over that infinite horizon).
It is tragic that "the left" fails to understand this and falls into the Peterson trap of talking about SS as if it were welfare. And now that Obama has turned it into welfare, why, it turns out Peterson was right all along. Doesn't it?
In order to avoid the "higher taxes or more deficit spending" created by the tax holiday, or other ill conceived schemes to get "the rich" to pay for Social Security, some such crime against workers as Santorum is calling for will become the "obvious" thing to do.
#2 Posted by dale coberly, CJR on Tue 10 Jan 2012 at 03:09 PM
It is easy for those like Santorum who know they will never need Social Security and Medicare in their senior years to suggest cuts to or elimination of those programs. Too bad we can't require that our esteemed Congressmen and Senators live by the same pension rules we had to instead of getting lifetime pensions after serving as little as two years. No wonder they won't need SS and don't care if the programs disappear.
Why aren't we seniors forcing attention on our large group of citizens like the Tea Party managed to do? What I hear seniors say over and over is that many of the changes our Legislators are proposing to these important programs can never happen. Are you kidding me?! Our lives are in the hands of many people who are more concerned about using politics as the means to assuring their own financial futures than they are about the people they represent - unless those people happen to be wealthy supporters of those politicians. It seems to me that the political youngsters like Santorum are becoming more and more greedy. Heaven help us if Santorum makes it into the White House! He can, and will, make sure that every middle class senior lives in poverty at some point in their senior years - and likely at the time we need help most.
#3 Posted by Carol, CJR on Mon 27 Feb 2012 at 07:20 PM