McCain: Social Security a 'Disgrace'

AFL CIO for AFL-CIO July 09, 2008

Posted by Tula Connell to AFL-CIO NOW

Struggling homeowners will need Social Security and Medicare now more than ever, according to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Due to the collapse of the housing market, the vast majority of Americans have accumulated little or no wealth—and so will be almost completely reliant on Social Security and Medicare to support them in their retirement years.

Given how many more of us will be dependent upon these key family programs, it’s too bad that just this week Sen. John McCain called Social Security a “disgrace.” He seems to think it’s a disgrace taxpayers fund Social Security (but apparently it’s OK we taxpayers endlessly fund the Iraq war…).

Here’s what McCain told a town hall in Denver on Monday:

"Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace and it’s got to be fixed."

As Josh Marshall at TPM notes:

It’s really a disgrace? That’s how the system was designed to operate. And it’s served as financial bedrock of retirement security in this country for going on a century.

The MoJo blog points out:

McCain’s Bush-echoing attack on Social Security isn’t just radical. It also contradicts his campaign’s stated position. McCain’s website says he supports “supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts.”

Further, when McCain trashed Social Security, it wasn’t a slip of the tongue. He repeated the statement again today on CNN. Economist Jared Bernstein at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) told MoJo blog he was shocked by McCain’s statement:

That is truly an amazing quote. It’s like he’s saying, “I just found out that taxes come from people…that’s a disgrace.” It betrays a really quite scary lack of knowledge about basic government….

Looks like McCain is moving full steam toward embracing Bush’s failed attempt to privatize Social Security, the nation’s most successful safety net. In 2005, when Bush was pushing to privatize Social Security, we talked with workers whose companies had reneged on pension promises, or who had minimal or no pension coverage through their workplace. Workers like Joan King, a retired schoolteacher in Orlando, Fla., who relied on Social Security to get by. After 35 years in the classroom, King would have seen a 40 percent benefit cut under Bush’s plan—and she had no idea how she’d get by.

Three years later, millions of homeowners have lost their savings, hundreds more corporations have backed out of their pension promises and far fewer companies are offering the kind of defined-benefit pension plans that helped minimize the number of U.S. seniors living in poverty. In short, a whole lot more people now will need Social Security.

But McCain doesn’t have to worry. As a U.S. senator, he’ll get a pension check for life, thanks to U.S. taxpayers.