As CEPR found, just 6.8 percent of workers would be affected if the cap were eliminated, while just 1.4 percent would be affected by a proposal currently before Congress that would apply the tax to income over $250,000 (but not on income earned between $110,100 and $250,000):

Eliminating the payroll tax cap would ensure Social Security could pay full benefits for nearly 75 years. However, this simple solution is ignored by conservatives, who would rather take the more regressive step of raising the retirement age, or simply privatize the program. And it certainly doesn’t help that the mainstream media consistently misinforms the public about Social Security’s financial health, ginning up a “crisis” while ignoring that one simple step would wipe the crisis away entirely.

House Majority Whip Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

Last night on Fox News, House Majoriy Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) claimed that the Republicans were just trimming the fat from the budget and getting rid of wasteful spending:

VAN SUSTEREN: But these cuts — I mean, these cuts — I mean, some of the cuts, I mean, just — you know, there are — there’s money sitting in our government. There’s some fat that we can.. some of these cuts. I mean — the fat is incredible!

MCCARTHY: Then you would support what we’re doing. That’s we’re doing committee by committee!

Watch the clip:

So what do McCarthy and the GOP consider budget fat? The New York Times today offered some details:

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would push 1.8 million people off food stamps and could cost 280,000 children their school lunch subsidies and 300,000 children their health insurance coverage through the federal and state Children’s Health Insurance Program. Elimination of the social services block grant to state and local governments would hit child abuse prevention programs, Meals on Wheels and child care.

A further 23 million would be affected by the repeal of the Social Services Block Grant, which helps fund child care and disability assistance to low-income Americans.

In fact, eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would more than provide the savings the Republicans are seeking, twice over.

But not only are House Republicans protecting “largely useless” weapons systems and programs by cutting needed social services, their motivation stems from trying to prevent military spending cuts of nearly $500 billion over ten years because of the Budget Control Act’s sequestration trigger. Luckily for the GOP, the Center for American Progress has found more than $500 billion in Pentagon cuts — i.e. the real budget fat — that could be implemented over the next decade while still maintaining our vast military superiority.

While GOP plan has no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate, the AP noted yesterday that it is “likely just a sample of what’s in store next year from Republicans if Mitt Romney wins the White House and the GOP takes back the Senate.”

House Republicans recently proposed billions of dollars in cuts to Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a critical income support for kids with severe disabilities who live in households with very low-income and assets. While the proposed cuts amount to just one 1/100th of a percentage point of the federal budget, they would be nothing short of devastating for our nation’s most vulnerable children, and the families who care for them.

The 2013 House Budget Resolution includes $3.5 billion in cuts (over 10 years) to benefits for the hardest-hit youngsters — those in families with more than one child receiving SSI for their disability. Some 150,000 children with severe disabilities would see their critically needed benefits cut dramatically, forcing parents to make impossible choices — whether to meet the needs of one disabled child over the other.

SSI provides income support, and Medicaid in most states, to low-income elderly and disabled Americans, including about 1.3 million children with severe disabilities. Only the most severely impaired children in households with very low income and resources qualify for SSI. Kids receive less than $600 per month, on average. While modest, SSI makes it possible for families to care for their kids with disabilities at home instead of in costly institutions.

It offsets some of the extra expenses related to the child’s disability — like transportation to and from doctors and specialists; adaptive equipment; and specialized child care — many of which may not be covered by private insurance or Medicaid.

It also replaces some of the income lost when a parent reduces his or her hours, or leaves a job altogether to stay home to care for a disabled child. Between 10 and 30 percent of parents (usually mothers) with disabled children report stopping working entirely, and between 15 and 68 percent report cutting work hours to care for their children with disabilities. Even with the income support from SSI, over a third of children receiving SSI remain in poverty.

Families with more than one disabled child are even harder hit. Over 70 percent of families with more than one disabled child receiving SSI report experiencing material hardships such as food insecurity, and housing and utility hardships—even with the income support from SSI.

Kids with disabilities face considerable obstacles. They are more likely to drop out of school, be unemployed, have lower earnings, and receive disability benefits as adults. SSI helps parents provide the services and supports kids with disabilities need, offering them a better chance to achieve self-sufficiency later in life, and saving taxpayer expenditures down the road.

Families raising low-income children with disabilities need more help, not less. Cutting SSI, especially for families raising more than one disabled child, would push already needy children with disabilities deeper into poverty, and would end up costing taxpayer dollars in the long run.

We can and must do better than balancing the budget on the backs of poor, disabled kids.

Click here for more information about the SSI Coalition for Children and Families, or to get involved.

Click here to share your story if SSI has helped your family or someone that you know.

Jesse Kelly 2010 campaign flyer

In the ad, Kelly makes a widely-debunked claim that ObamaCare will “cut $500 billion from Medicare.” The legislation aims to achieve $500 billion in Medicare savings, which will extend the life of the program and provide better care.

But after his disclaimer, Kelly and his grandfather Hank Allgyer say:

KELLY: I’m committed to protecting Social Security and Medicare for our seniors.”

ALLGYER: Don’t let Ron Barber cut my benefits, Jesse. I’ve earned them.

KELLY: Don’t worry, Grandpa. I won’t.

ALLGYER: I know you’ll protect us.

Watch the video:

On his website, Kelly says he supports “preserving, protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare” and does not support “privatizing, eliminating or phasing out these programs in any way.” He advocates actions to prevent Social Security from “going bankrupt” but lays out five principles that would seemingly prevent any real action to do that:

1. Any solution must be bipartisan
2. I will not vote for any solution that privatizes social security
3. I will not vote for any solution that raises taxes
4. I will not vote for any solution that cuts benefits
5. I will not vote for any solution that raises the retirement age

By ruling out changing the amount of money coming in to the Social Security fund (raising taxes) or the amount going out (cutting benefits or changing the retirement age), he seems to take virtually everything off the table. But he hasn’t always had this view.

The Hill noted that as recently as April 18, his website called for partial privatization of Social Security. His earlier view that “Younger workers should have the choice of allocating a portion of their contribution into a personal retirement account in their name,” is has been completely erased from his positions page.

And, the same article notes, in a 2010 debate, Kelly said the nation must take steps to reform, privatize, and phase out entitlements. “You need to fulfill your promises in the near future while phasing out future generations, taking steps to privatize, vouchers, everything,” he said. “It’s not an option of should it be done. It must be done.”

Kelly, a construction manager and Tea Party favorite, infamously hosted an M16 automatic weapons shooting campaign event to help supporters “get on target” to “help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office,” just months before a gunman went on a shooting spree at a Giffords community event in Tuscon, leaving six dead and a dozen wounded — including both Giffords and Barber. Giffords resigned her seat in January to focus on her recovery.

His issues page has since been changed to remove the phrase “The Second Amendment of the Constitution is not just about hunting. It is about the right of a free people to defend themselves.”

The Kelly website makes no mention of whether the nation has always been at war with Eastasia, but Kelly apparently does not think Arizona voters can remember all the way back to April 2012.

Headlines from across the country — like the following from the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times — were quick to paint a grim picture of the program’s future finances, noting that “painful” changes would need to be made to ensure its solvency beyond 2033:

The headlines and stories that follow create the illusion that Social Security is fast going broke, even though it is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter (imagine the shock the media would display, meanwhile, if transportation, food stamps, or other programs had two decades of guaranteed funding).

They also ignore an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits. Payroll taxes that finance Social Security are only collected on income up to a certain level ($110,100 in 2012), creating a regressive system that puts an undue burden on low- and middle-income workers. Eliminating that cap would allow Social Security to pay full benefits for the next 75 years, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) introduced legislation that would raise the cap last year, but it has been ignored by Republicans and the media, who instead continue to feed the narrative that Social Security needs vast changes — including potential benefit cuts — to shore up its future. Americans of all political stripes oppose cuts to Social Security benefits, but as the Columbia Journalism Review noted earlier this month, media coverage has perpetuated the belief — particularly among young Americans — that Social Security is broken.

“The elite press repeatedly quotes the commentary of the devoted opponents of social insurance retirement programs,” Yale professor emeritus Theodore Marmor told CJR. “But they appear unaware of how they are supporting a strategic attack on social insurance that has been going on for years.”

U.S. Senate candidate Sam Rohrer (R-PA)

Rohrer also thinks the government should no longer provide federal services to the American people, a position he took a step farther Saturday at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference. During a debate featuring the state’s Republican Senate candidates, Rohrer, the party’s front-runner, outlined a proposal to privatize Social Security and end the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides aid to disabled Americans:

ROHRER: The structural aspect of the program that is in place, financially, if we don’t make changes, it will not be there for those who are coming up. So we’ve got to stop the cost increase, meaning we do it this way. We’ve got to take out the younger workers, maybe it’s an age of 50, maybe it’s as you say, 45, determine that age where those up to that point are not compelled to join Social Security. They’re allowed to go into a program like 401(k), have their own plan, and you obviously cut the cost on the outside.

But secondarily, we have to reduce the cost of Social Security now, otherwise we will not find us able to make payouts either. And that, I recommend, we do by bringing it back into line with what Social Security was acceptably set into place to be originally, and that’s as a retirement assistance program. Meaning we have to back off such things as disability — SSI payments — where we have many new people brought into the program. Many illegal aliens are receiving SSI payments. That is a part of the program that Social Security was never intended to fund, and that’s a part that we can logically back off, bring it back to its major core. I think we can preserve and extend the life of Social Security.

Watch it:

Privatizing Social Security, as Rohrer would like to do, would have had disastrous consequences for Americans during the Great Recession. According to a 2008 Center for American Progress analysis found that an October 2008 retiree would have lost $26,000 in a private Social Security account even before the market bottomed out in 2009. Given that two-thirds of senior citizens count on Social Security for more than half their monthly income, those kind of losses would dump millions into poverty.

Ending SSI and disability payments goes even farther. According to the Social Security Administration, more than 8.1 million Americans received SSI in January 2012, and nearly 1.3 million of the recipients were children. SSI’s support is modest — the average monthly payment in January was $517 — but important. A 2005 study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that SSI lifted 2.4 million Americans above the poverty line in 2003. And despite Rohrer’s claims that “illegal aliens” are benefiting from the program, SSI has far stricter requirements even for legal immigrants than most federal assistance programs.

Rohrer, meanwhile, ignored the easiest solution to Social Security’s long-term health. Lifting the payroll tax cap, which currently taxes all income below $106,800 for Social Security purposes, would ensure the program’s solvency for the next 75 years.

According to the report, as of 2009, low-income children received 70 percent of government funding for children — a respectable portion of overall federal spending dedicated to the needs of those under 18. But while the straight numbers look good for poor kids, those children’s future prospects are frightening.

The Urban Institute “estimate[s] that low-income children receive 99 percent of housing expenditures, 98 percent of expenditures on nutrition, 97 percent of health expenditures, and 94 percent of expenditures on social services.” So, of course, cutting the budgets for these areas would disproportionately affect children:

If these services sound familiar, it’s because many are the same programs that Republicans have aimed to cut in their most recent budget proposals — specifically, housing, nutrition, and health.

Millions of children have been kept out of extreme poverty by programs like food stamps, and the overall poverty rates would have been twice as high in 2010 without the social safety net. Surely, the opposite effect would occur with any cuts to welfare, social security, medicaid, or the other programs that keep these kids afloat.

For seven seasons, the West Wing was therapy for thousands of Bush-weary progressives who fantasized about being governed by a Nobel Prize winning scholar who didn’t believe that high-income tax cuts were a panacea. Now that America actually is governed by a Nobel Prize winning scholar with a real domestic policy agenda, however, it’s time to be honest about President Bartlet’s legacy. While the ability to rhetorically shame conservatives made him an appealing fantasy, the substance of Bartlet’s policies ranged from uninspired on issues like health care to downright destructive on Social Security and education. Bartlet had a lackluster economic record. He gave away a seat on the Supreme Court to the far right, and he consistently favored symbolic cultural victories over real opportunities to make life better for American families.

If you set aside the budget-busting Bush tax cuts, George W. Bush was actually a better president on domestic policy than President Bartlet. So Bartlet expanded Medicare to cover mammograms and cancer clinical trials? President Bush actually signed a prescription drug plan for seniors. And while George W. Bush at least had the decency to allow his plan to turn Social Security over to Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers die a politically embarrassing death, Bartlet worked with Republicans to pass a massive Social Security reform at a time when Republicans’ were single-mindedly focused on privatization. If the Bartlet Social Security plan had actually been in effect when the market bottomed out in 2008, millions of American seniors would have been left with no safety net to fall back on.

Besides trashing Social Security, the Bartlet Administration had few bold ideas. What was the Bartlet plan to ensure universal access to health care? Or the Bartlet plan to combat global warming? What did President Bartlet do to close the education gap between poor and rich children? Or to ensure that every child who does succeed in high school will be able to pay for college? If anything, his education policy was as much a betrayal as his Social Security debacle. Although the first term Bartlet White House had ambitious plans for education reform, the second term Bartlet wound up supporting school vouchers.

After nearly an entire term in the White House, Bartlet’s economic record was so dismal that it is a miracle he was reelected. Consider his attempt to literally defend this record before God (who he also calls a “feckless thug”): “3.8 million new jobs, that wasn’t good? Bailed out Mexico. Increased foreign trade. 30 million new acres of land for conservation. Put Mendoza on the bench. We’re not fighting a war.”

3.8 million jobs sure sounds like a lot, but at the time Bartlet made this speech, it added up to just over 90,000 jobs during each month of his presidency — far less than the country needs just to keep up with population growth. This kind of stagnant growth could be excused if President Bartlet, like President Obama, presided over our emergence from an historic recession, but the Bartlet Administration experienced no similar economic calamity.

Bartlet does deserve credit for appointing Justice Mendoza, but the Mendoza appointment is overshadowed by his egregious decision to appoint Justice Christopher Mulready. Mulready’s appointment came about as part of a compromise to ensure that Senate Republicans would also confirm a chief justice whose very personal experience with Roe v. Wade would otherwise make her unconfirmable. While there is certainly symbolic value to having a chief justice who once had an abortion, such symbolism will come as cold comfort to the millions of American families impacted every time Mulready joins his fellow conservative jurists engaged in a systematic campaign to rewrite the law to leave workers and consumers powerless against the wealthy and the well-connected.

President Bartlet had his moments — they just rarely had much to do with economic justice. Bartlet was a strong supporter of both gay rights and reproductive freedom, for example, and he deserves credit for negotiating a peace between Israel and Palestine. Ultimately, however, his presidency advances a very small kind of liberalism that appeals mostly to people who’ve never worried if they could pay their medical bills or if their children can afford college.

President Bartlet’s inattentiveness to the 99 percent cannot be dismissed because economic justice doesn’t make good television. Screenwriters could not design a better villain than James Clark McReynolds, the Supreme Court Justice who systematically undermined FDR’s New Deal and routinely referred to President Roosevelt as a “crippled son-of-a-bitch.” Lyndon Johnson’s transformation from southern segregationist to civil rights crusader reached a climax that literally brought Martin Luther King to tears. President Obama’s drawn out battle over the Affordable Care Act is riddled with the kinds of crushing defeats, unexpected setbacks and narrow triumphs that fiction writers dream of recreating.

Ultimately, the Bartlet Administration was a failed opportunity because President Bartlet never once sought out these kinds of battles. Protecting choice or welcoming gays into the military (something the Bartlet Administration supported but never accomplished) are important prongs of the progressive agenda, but a liberalism that’s uninterested in income inequality or ensuring that no American ever dies because they cannot afford to treat a curable disease is both a recipe for electoral defeat and a tragedy of moral neglect.

Lest there be any doubt, Fed Up! is not the least bit ambiguous when it claims that America’s safety net violates the Constitution. The passage calling Social Security unconstitutional, for example, clearly and unequivocally states that Social Security exists “at the expense of respect for the Constitution” (note: the font in this clip is different because it is not available online and had to be captured on a Kindle reader):

Eighteen months after Gingrich lavished praise on Perry’s narrow vision for America, he will now share a stage with the radical governor and accept his endorsement. Given Fed Up!‘s complete clarity in laying out Perry’s view of the Constitution, however, it is difficult to believe that Gingrich did not know exactly what he was praising when he drafted such an effusive foreword to Perry’s book.

Now that Gingrich has emerged as one of the two leading contenders for the GOP presidential nomination, he has an obligation to explain whether he still believes, as Perry does, that Social Security is unconstitutional. Moreover, if Gingrich has since abandoned that belief, he has an equal obligation to explain what happened in the last eighteen months to change his mind on such an important constitutional question.

Ron Paul thinks this is unconstitutional

To see the new Iowa GOP frontrunner claim that all of these things violate the Constitution — and to learn which seven cabinet departments he also believes are unconstitutional — watch our video here:

But now, as part of a million dollar ad buy meant to resuscitate his campaign before the Iowa caucuses, Perry is attempting to pitch himself as a defender of Social Security. Decrying Washington’s “political correctness,” Perry claims he isn’t allowed to say that “Washington insiders are bankrupting Social Security,” an interesting claim given his apparent desire to fully dismantle it:

PERRY: Washington is the capital of political correctness, where double speak reigns and truth is frowned upon. You can’t say that congressmen becoming lobbyists is a form of legal corruption or that we give aid money to countries that oppose America. Or that Washington insiders are bankrupting Social Security. You and I know it’s true, but not politically correct. I’m Rick Perry, an outsider who will overhaul Washington and tell you the truth.

Watch it:

Perry first declared Social Security unconstitutional in August, telling The Daily Beast’s Andrew Romano that the Founding Fathers weren’t “thinking about a federally operated program of pensions” when they drafted the Constitution. He then made the infamous Ponzi scheme remark two weeks later. He’s also offered support for a privatization plan that has been a proven failure.

Perry isn’t the only Republican who has targeted Social Security in the past, but is trying to paint himself as a defender of the program now. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) also called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, yet claimed (inaccurately) that Democrats were bankrupting the program last week. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), a proponent of privatization, made the same false claim.

Perry and his Republican friends continue to ignore basic facts about Social Security and its future. Despite Perry’s claims, Social Security not going bankrupt — it has a $2.6 trillion surplus and is fully solvent for at least another 25 years — and it’s long-term viability isn’t hard to fix. The problem is, Perry and his GOP colleagues continue to willingly ignore the easiest way to ensure Social Security’s solvency for the next three-quarters of a century.

The latest argument to emerge from the GOP has been that extending the payroll tax cut would undermine Social Security, since payroll tax revenue goes directly into the Social Security Trust Fund. Multiple Congressional Republicans have adopted that theory of late, including South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), who put it to use on CNBC last night:

DEMINT: Republicans are always ready to cut taxes, as you know. We don’t think it’s a good idea to do it by raiding Social Security.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) made the same argument on Fox News earlier in the day:

PAUL: Well, you know, Social Security is $6 trillion short of money. So the president is advocating reducing the amount of funding to Social Security when they’re already $6 trillion short. So it doesn’t really make any sense and it really argues that he’s going to bankrupt Social Security even quicker by reducing it’s funding.

Watch a compilation:

That argument, which has been adopted by members of both parties and perpetuated by news outlets like NPR, has one problem: it’s not true. Each of the plans under consideration is fully paid for, replacing revenue the Social Security Trust Fund would have lost from lower payroll tax receipts with money made up from either alternative revenue sources or spending cuts. The earlier payroll tax holiday, set to expire this month, was also fully-funded, and the program has thus far “been held harmless” from the holiday, as Reuters noted today.

And while the opposition from Republicans may seem like an impassioned defense of a vital and popular program, a look at their history with the program shows it is not. DeMint has supported privatizing the program while Paul is a proponent of means testing — “solutions” that are both bad policy and unnecessary. Despite Paul’s $6 trillion assertion, Social Security actually has a $2.6 trillion surplus and is solvent through at least 2037.

And if Republicans truly want to use the payroll tax to shore up its long-term viability, there is an easy way to do that. The payroll tax is currently collected only on the first $106,800 in income; raising or eliminating that cap would make the program fully solvent for the next 75 years.

If Republicans have a cogent reason for opposing a tax cut for the middle class that is meant to stimulate the economy, they should provide it, because their current line — that such a tax cut will weaken a program many of them have sought to undermine for years — simply isn’t true.

First, Gingrich explains that he would let workers opt into private accounts, just like Bush’s suggested system. Gingrich points to two models that inspired him to suggest this approach: privatized retirement accounts in both Chile and Galveston, Texas. He added the caveat that, should private accounts fail to deliver the same return as minimum Social Security benefits, the government would step in and make investors whole again:

The government guarantees that all workers with personal accounts will receive at least as much in retirement as they would under the current Social Security system. If someone with a personal account retires with benefits lower than those offered by the current system, the Treasury will send them a check to make up the difference. Thus, there is a legal government obligation that in a worst case scenario a retiree will be able to enjoy benefits at least as good as they would under th e traditional Social Security system.

Watch him explain the idea at a campaign event today:

As we pointed out when Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) suggested a similar idea, promising to make investors whole again sets up a huge moral hazard problem. If investors know full well that the government is going to provide them with a minimum benefit, no matter what they do, then the incentive is to make risky investments and hope for a big payoff. After all, why not take the risk if the government has guaranteed that you can’t lose money? Investors have every incentive to bet big in the hopes of a large payout, because if they go bust, the government will bail them out.

Add to this the fact that the privatized systems in Chile and Galveston aren’t as wonderful as Gingrich makes out. In fact, while they work quite well for the wealthy, middle- and lower-income participants wind up worse off. Regarding the Galveston system, Eric Kingson, a professor of social work at Syracuse University, explained that “for most people, it’s somewhere between ‘very bad’ and ‘not very good.’ ” Chile’s system, meanwhile, has “left millions without savings for their retirement.” According to estimates by Chile’s undersecretary for pensions, “in 2007, only 60 percent of Chilean workers had some kind of pension coverage, down from 86 percent in the 1970s.”

Gingrich’s plan would also cause the deficit to explode, as money meant for Social Security would have to be diverted into the creation and administration of private accounts. Social Security kept 14 million seniors out of poverty last year, but Gingrich would enact a scheme to privatize the system, while hoisting the costs of failure onto the federal government.

But Americans continue to rely heavily on safety net programs to stay afloat, according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Without the permanent safety net programs (including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and various assistance programs) and temporary programs included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (which Republicans have falsely claimed didn’t work), more than a quarter of the country’s population would have fallen beneath the poverty line in 2010, CBPP says:

Our report also shows that if the government safety net as a whole — these temporary initiatives (all were featured in the 2009 Recovery Act) plus safety-net policies already in place when the recession hit — hadn’t existed in 2010, the poverty rate would have been 28.6 percent, nearly twice the actual 15.5 percent.

CBPP’s report comes on the heels of newly-refined poverty measures from the Census Bureau that painted an even bleaker picture of American poverty. According to the new measure, 16 percent of the population, or approximately 49.1 million Americans, lived in poverty in 2010, up from 46.2 million found in the official report released in September. The bulk of that difference comes from seniors, the very people who rely most on social safety net programs. Because the alternative measure takes out-of-pocket medical expenses into account, it found that nearly 16 percent of those over age 65 lived in poverty in 2010, up from 9 percent in the September report.

Perry admission that he holds these radical beliefs showed serious audacity, but Perry is also an ambitious politician who doubtless read the Tea Party’s tea leaves and determined that it was in his political interest to come out as a tenther. Now that his campaign has run seriously off the rails, however, even Perry appears to recognize that outing himself as a tenther was not such a good way to advance his political career. Although Perry’s recently released economic plan would unquestionably be the most radical assault on America’s social safety net in nearly a century if it ever became law, it is also strangely moderate compared to Perry’s previous stance that Medicare, Social Security, and much of our educational infrastructure must be eliminated entirely because they are unconstitutional:

• Social Security: As Travis Waldron reported yesterday, Perry’s new position on Social Security is a George W. Bush-esque proposal to turn millions of Americans’ retirement funds over to Wall Street through privatization. This is a dangerous and radical idea, but it is a far cry from Perry’s original position that the very idea of providing Social Security to America’s seniors is an “assault” on the Constitution itself.
• Medicare: Perry also supports a number of terrible Medicare proposals, including a Paul Ryan-style plan to voucherize Medicare, “gradually raising the age of Medicare eligibility,” and reducing benefits for many seniors. These proposals could potentially phase out Medicare over time depending on how closely they map Ryan’s subtle plan to gradually eliminate Medicare. Nevertheless, Perry’s new willingness to allow something that vaguely resembles Medicare to continue to exist is a step back from his previous claim that Medicare “eroded our founding fathers’ boundaries that they had put upon the federal government.”
• Education: Perry also proposes cutting $25 billion in federal education funds — or about half of all funding for elementary and secondary education programs. This new position is only about 50 percent as radical as his previous statement that “I don’t think the federal government has a role in your children’s education.”

Let’s be absolutely clear. Perry’s proposals would be a disaster for the millions of Americans struggling to get by in a terrible economy. Worse, they directly target the most vulnerable Americans — seniors who have left the workforce and children who are still obtaining the skills they need to provide for themselves in the future. But compared to his previous view that nearly the entire Twentieth Century violates the Constitution, his new positions are quite a step back. Three months ago, Rick Perry was the most prominent and outspoken tenther in the country. Today, even Perry understands that outspoken tentherism is toxic.

At other points, Perry mentioned that Social Security should be returned to the states, a “solution” that is economically impossible. Today, however, Perry walked all of that back, choosing instead to join his GOP colleagues in their support of privatizing Social Security. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed outlining his new economic plan, Perry touted the benefits of “personal” accounts, the GOP’s buzzword for privatization:

Cut, Balance and Grow also gives younger workers the option to own their Social Security contributions through personal retirement accounts that Washington politicians can never raid. Because young workers will own their contributions, they will be free to seek a market rate of return if they choose, and to leave their retirement savings to their dependents when they die.

Unfortunately for Perry, this move amounts to dropping support for a plan so toxic it couldn’t even garner consideration in favor of a plan that, while slightly less toxic, has already been rejected by the American people. Republican attempts to privatize Social Security went down in flames in 2005, and even now, with the GOP telling Americans the system is broken and ignoring the easiest way to shore up its long-term solvency, voters continue to reject the idea of privatizing one of the government’s most popular programs.

Perhaps that’s because the American people know just how dangerous private Social Security accounts could be. According to a Center for American Progress study, an October 2008 retiree would have lost $26,000 in a private Social Security account due to the financial crisis, and that analysis was done before the market hit its floor in the spring of 2009. When millions of senior citizens lost nearly all of their retirement savings in their own private investment accounts, Social Security was the only income they had left. As a result, the program kept 14 million seniors out of poverty in 2010.

While Perry has apparently ditched his Ponzi scheme talk, the idea that his plan for Social Security is as safe as the current program is its own monstrous lie. If that wasn’t bad enough, Perry also supports raising the age at which retirees would become eligible for Social Security, another incredibly regressive idea.

Cain’s plan ends several of the current taxes that help fund federal government programs, including the payroll tax that finances Social Security — one of the most popular government programs there is. That would seem like a political loser, given that Americans of all political stripes oppose cuts to the program. But Sunday, Steve Forbes, a former presidential candidate and long-time proponent of the flat tax, praised Cain’s 999 plan specifically for not funding Social Security and Medicare in an editorial published in the New York Post:

The Cain plan would rid us of not only the federal income tax, but also the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes.

For someone like Forbes, whose net worth is upwards of $430 million, Social Security and Medicare might not be a necessity. For elderly Americans with much less money, however, the programs are vital. Social Security kept 14 million seniors out of poverty in 2010, after many lost most or all of their retirement savings in the 2008 financial crisis. Since it passed in 1965, meanwhile, Medicare has increased the number of seniors with health coverage, improved life expectancy rates, and reduced poverty among the elderly.

As Congress and presidential candidates have focused on spending cuts over the last two years, Americans continue to oppose cuts to both Social Security and Medicare. Apparently, though, ensuring that those programs can’t be funded is something to be celebrated in the Republican presidential primary.

Alex Rodriguez may not be in the World Series, but he's paying low payroll taxes.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R) faced questions on numerous issues from townhall attendees in Racine today, but his most ardent challenges came from constituents urging him to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

One of the tax issues involved Social Security, which is paid for by a payroll tax that is levied on yearly wages up to $106,800. One constituent stood and asked why he pays the payroll tax on everything that he earns, but New York Yankees third basemen Alex Rodriguez — who made $32 million in 2011 — is only taxed on his first $106,000. “Why can’t you take the cap off” the payroll tax, the man asked.

Ryan responded by saying that he is “not unsympathetic to that idea,” but then proceeded to mislead the crowd, telling it that raising the Social Security payroll tax cap wouldn’t dramatically extend the program’s lifespan:

ATTENDEE: Last year i worked 52 weeks out of the year trying to support my family. They took Social Security and Medicare out of every one of my paychecks. What I don’t understand is why a baseball player for the New York Yankees can make $22 million a year and they only take a little bit out of his first paycheck. Why can’t you take the cap off of Social Security?

RYAN: I am not unsympathetic at all to that idea. Here’s the one issue that raises concern in my mind. If it’s just the guy who’s making that kind of a salary, that’s one thing. But the problem is it’s a self-employed tax as well. […] When you run the numbers…it gets you about six years of solvency in a 75-year problem. The problem is it doesn’t get you that much savings. I think the better way to go to get savings in Social Security is to stop subsidizing the rich. … If you could just do the salaried person and not get the self-employed person, that’d be one thing, but it wouldn’t be that much money at the end of the day.

Watch it:

Ryan’s numbers, while popular among Republicans, are wrong. According to the Congressional Research Service, eliminating the tax cap would create a surplus for the program while ensuring its solvency for another 75 years, not six, as Ryan claimed.

Unfortunately, Republican intransigence when it comes to any tax increase prevents lawmakers from shoring up the program’s future, even while multimillionaires like Rodriguez continue to have an extremely low percentage of their income covered by the payroll tax.

From 2005 to 2010, Cain wrote weekly commentary for his company The New Voice, Inc. He dedicated a few of his columns to register full support for President George W. Bush’s disastrous idea to privatize Social Security. Viewing Social Security as “immoral” and “oppressive,” he blasted Democrats for supporting “involuntary servitude” of African Americans through the Social Security and payroll tax system. From one column entitled, “Ownerships: An Unalienable Right”:

The 70-year-old Social Security structure and the 92-year-old income tax code thwart the natural, individual motivation of citizens to use their God-given talents to pursue happiness and their respective dreams. Any program that undermines an individual’s liberty to create ownership is, then, by its very nature, immoral. It took our nation nearly 250 years to end slavery and live up to the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. It should not take us another 250 years to cease the involuntary negative return most working people receive from Social Security, or the involuntary servitude imposed by the oppressive income tax code.

In another column entitled “Separate Water Fountains,” Cain said the Social Security system “by its very nature discriminates against black men and women.” With their “unconscionable” refusal to implement private accounts, Democratic “so-called black leaders” want to see “the next generation of Blacks remain in economic slavery on the Democratic plantation“:

It is now evident that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not apply to the Social Security system. Due to the rising retirement age, differences in life expectancy between Blacks and Whites, and mandatory payroll tax deductions, the system by its very nature discriminates against black men and women.[...]

Perhaps most unconscionable is the opposition to personal retirement accounts by the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and many of our nation’s so-called black leaders. Personal retirement accounts would provide future generations of Blacks the retirement security their parents and grandparents never had.

Instead, black Democratic leaders are willing to see the next generation of Blacks remain in economic slavery on the Democratic plantation, so long as they can deny any Republican a perceived political victory.

Cain’s over the top rhetoric strongly suggests that he shares Perry’s belief that Social Security is unconstitutional. Under the 13th Amendment, “[n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

His claims are also wildly inaccurate. Indeed, the nearly 5 million African Americans who receive Social Security benefit more from this essential program than the average white American. Studies show that they “receive modestly more in Social Security benefits for each dollar they pay in payroll taxes than whites do” because of the progressive benefit structure and that they benefit more from SSDI because they are unfortunately more likely “to become disabled or die before retiring.”

Private accounts, however, would leave African-Americans worse off. As the GAO notes, they “are likely to disproportionately affect equity for minorities.” Because of the “gaps in earnings at younger ages and lower average pay than whites who have the same level of education,” minorities would be at a disadvantage in how much and when they could invest in the private account. Ultimately, “the risks would be more acute for African Americans than for whites, and the potential rewards likely would be smaller.”

As is often the case with Cain, the rhetorical glaze can’t hide the rotten consequences of his policies. And given the popularity of the program as it is, he’s unlikely to win over anyone by equating them with slave owners.