The Truth Is Coming Out - Republicans Hate Social Security

Before the election many high-ranking Republicans, including RNC chairman Michael Steele, lied to the American people by saying that no Republican wanted to privatize or abolish Social Security.   It was a lie because at least 104 Republican members of Congress had made past statements where they advocated either the abolishment or privatization of Social Security, and now that number has risen because several new members of Congress have said the same thing.

The reason they told that lie is because they know a huge majority of Americans support Social Security, and they were afraid they would lose votes if they told the truth.   The Republicans oppose Social Security (and Medicare, unemployment insurance, and the minimum wage) because the people they truly represent don't need these things -- the richest Americans and the giant corporations.   These people have plenty of money and couldn't care less that many Americans depend on Social Security.

Well, the election is over now and the truth is starting to come out again.   The first nutty right-wing Republican to speak against Social Security is the teabagger governor of Texas, Rick Perry (pictured).   Perry appeared on CNN's Parker/Spitzer show a few days ago and said he thought the individual states should be able to opt out of the Social Security program.

Perry used as an example the three Texas counties (Matagorda, Brazoria and Galveston) that pulled their county employees out of Social Security in 1981 and set up private retirement accounts for them.   The problem is that there's a couple of things Perry didn't tell Americans.

The first is that the Congressional Research Service (CRS) looked at the programs in those three counties in 2005 (after they had been in effect for at least 24 years).   They compared families in three income brackets with what they were getting under the privatization and what they would have gotten under Social Security.   They concluded that families in all three income brackets would have done better under Social Security.

The CRS said,   "By examining the actual system in place in Texas, this study shows that Americans are worse off with privatized accounts -- not in theory, but in reality."   And remember, this was in 2005.   You can imagine what those private accounts look like after the recession took trillions of dollars in investments out of the stock market starting around the end of 2007.   I'll bet those county employees wish they'd been allowed to stay in the Social Security program.

Now Perry wants to do the same things to ALL working Texans.   He, like his Republican cohorts, are willing to throw workers under the bus so his rich Wall Street buddies can get rich playing with the money in those "private" accounts.   And you can bet that the greedmongers of Wall Street would suck those accounts dry.

The second thing he didn't tell Americans is that the Social Security program is dependent on all Americans (and states) remaining a part of the program.   If states are allowed to opt out whenever they want to, it will destroy the entire program.   But that's just what the Republicans want to do -- destroy Social Security.

You can bet that in the next couple of years the Republican House of Representatives will come up with a bill for "privatization" or "opt-out provisions" for Social Security.   They will try to sell it as being a good thing for Americans, but that will be a lie.   It will be an attempt to destroy Social Security and give that money to the Wall Street bankers.

The only thing standing against the destruction of Social Security is a barely-Democratic Senate and a Democratic president.   I realize they have not shown much backbone so far (just look at the inadequate health care and Wall Street regulation bills they passed), but we must hope they will grow enough backbone to defend Social Security.   If they don't, we'll be thrown back to the brutal capitalism of the 1920's.