October 27, 2010
If a member of Congress shows that he doesn’t know the basics of the government’s most important social program then this makes a good news story, with a headline like “Congressman Ignorant of Basic Facts on Social Security.” However, in the Washington Post, a member of Congress can say any loon tune thing they want about Social Security and have it treated as a reasonable comment.
Hence we are given without comment a quote from Republican Representative Tom Price:
“The American people know that the current Social Security program will not survive based upon current rules.”
This is a larger gaffe than almost anything the Post has written on from a politician. It would be comparable a politician insisting on his commitment to ending the war in Vietnam, thereby demonstrating his failure to recognize that the war had been over for 35 years.
Of course Social Security will survive just fine based on its current rules. According to the Congressional Budget Office the program can pay scheduled benefits for the next 29 years with no changes whatsoever. It could always pay a far higher benefit than what current retirees receive even if no changes are ever made. If changes comparable to those put in place by the 1983 Greenspan Commission are put in place it would be able to pay full scheduled benefits well in the 22nd century.
At one point the article refers to the interest of President Obama’s deficit commission in “reducing benefits for wealthier retirees.” It would have been worth reminding readers that “wealthier” in this sentence refers to people like school teachers and firefighters, not the sort of people who are generally viewed as wealthy.
The article also reports the view of Erskine Bowles, the co-director of the commission and a board member of Morgan Stanley, that the size of government should be limited to 21 percent of GDP. It would have been useful to point out to readers that Mr. Bowles apparently believes that we should slow growth and kill jobs to keep government to some arbitrary size cap. By contrast, most other people believe that the services that can be provided most efficiently by the government should be provided by the government.
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