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.

– Karl Singer

As many analyses over the years have shown, privatized retirement accounts would not provide a more secure retirement for seniors. In fact, an October 2008 retiree would have lost tens of thousands of dollars in that month’s stock market slide alone. And as it turns out, not only would Chile-style private accounts be bad for workers, they’d be bad for the country’s bottom line as well, as Bloomberg News detailed:

Herman Cain, the former pizza executive surging in polls for the Republican presidential nomination, wants to replace Social Security with what he called the “Chilean model” of private pension funds. Full adoption of that model may push the U.S. deeper into deficit than Greece. [...] The U.S. budget shortfall would rise above Greece’s 10.5 percent of GDP if all of the current payroll tax was diverted into private saving funds, according to Bloomberg data.

Chile’s plan has “left millions without savings for their retirement and originally provided no safety net for the poor.” 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.”

Of course, Cain would have to radically rethink Social Security since his 999 tax plan eliminates the payroll tax, Social Security’s source of financing. But that doesn’t change the fact that the sort of privatization he envisions would entail massive new costs to the government just to pay for shifting to a new system, while leaving everyone but the very wealthiest seniors more vulnerable and with less of a safety net.

Yesterday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Perry was asked to pin down exactly what he thought of Social Security and what he would do to reform it. His answer is hardly a tribute to coherence:

PERRY: What we talked about in the book was that this was one of many places where the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., or Congress or the president of the United States went well outside of what our Founding Fathers — but listen, Social Security is in place, that program is going to be there, it’s just got to be transformed, and that’s what we’re talking about doing.

Watch it:

Perry is trying to have it both ways by declaring the program both unconstitutional and worth preserving in the same breath. But in trying to bury his unpopular Social Security position, Perry still offered two Social Security reform ideas that are quite damaging to future beneficiaries. First, he suggests “staggering the age upward for people to become eligible” for benefits. Raising the age is very regressive for low-income workers because they do not live as long as high income workers. From 1997 to 2006, low-income men registered only about one-fifth the gain in life expectancy at age 65 compared to higher-income men over the same period. The workers who need the benefits they earned the most would be less likely to see them if the age is raised, a reason the idea is very unpopular with the public.

Perry’s second thought is to give young people a “private option” of private accounts rather than guaranteed benefits. Three years after the 2008 financial meltdown, the idea is still foolish. Millions of Americans lost enormous chunks of their retirement savings in that crisis. For many of them, Social Security was the only source of retirement funds they had left. The sheer volatility of market behavior “illustrates the real potential for decades-long declines that could erode the value of a private retirement account invested in stocks.” Despite being the big plan for nearly every GOP presidential candidate, a plurality of Americans still dislike privatizing Social Security.

Perry may be endeavoring to shed his wildly unpopular plans to ditch Social Security, his ideas for “reform” fair no better. Given his extreme views on Social Security, it appears that stuffing a popover in his mouth is the best answer he’s given so far.

But when NPR host Diane Rehm challenged Daniels on the claim his morning, the popular governor relented, acknowledging that the characterization was “trite” and perhaps “too casual”:

REHM: But you agreed with [Perry]. You called it a “Ponzi scheme” as well.

DANIELS: Well, I said that’s a place to start. But again, people of every persuasion have used that — maybe it’s too casual an allusion. [...]

REHM: To use that word signals that it is fraudulent and it’s not fraudulent.

DANIELS: Well, you know, I’ll be careful not use it again.

Listen here:

Social Security is not a Ponzi Scheme by any stretch of the imagination — PolitiFact rated the claim “false” — and it’s positive to see Daniels acknowledge such and say he won’t use the term again.

But that commitment makes Daniels’ newly published book, which is why we went on Rehm’s show in the first place, already out of date. In it, “he doesn’t say the exact words ‘Ponzi scheme,’ but only because he’s more verbose than that,” Politico reported. “This whole setup is enough to give Mr. Ponzi a bad name — or a legitimate job,” Daniels wrote in the book.

Daniels joins House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who also recently flip-flopped on whether Social Security is a “ponzi scheme,” saying, “It’s not the word I would choose to describe” the program.

“It’s not a criminal enterprise, but it’s a pay-as-you-go system, where earlier investors — or say, taxpayers — get a positive rate of return, and the most recent investors — or taxpayers — get a negative rate of return,” he said. “That is how those schemes work.”

But in an interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt that aired over the weekend, Ryan was asked the same question, and this time, he refused to agree with Perry’s assertion that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, instead calling Social Security a “critical program” that is merely “going bankrupt”:

HUNT: Final question. Rick Perry says Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Mitt Romney says that’s inflammatory language that makes him unelectable to be president. Who’s right?

RYAN: Well, I don’t know if – who’s unelectable or not. It’s not the word I would choose to describe it. Ponzi was a criminal enterprise. Obviously, that’s not the case with Social Security. But there are problems with it, with Social Security, that we all acknowledge. It’s going broke. If we do nothing, an across-the-board benefit cut hits current seniors, a critical program that millions of people rely on, and the next generation will get a bankrupt program, and so let’s save it.

Watch it:

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Jared Bernstein explained, Social Security is absolutely not a Ponzi scheme. “Social Security is pay-as-you-go. Ponzi’s scheme was not as it depended on continuous doubling the ratio of contributors to investors,” he wrote.

Ryan’s refusal to double-down on his comments may be due to the fact that the GOP is starting to get a little nervous about its leading figures constantly deriding Social Security. As Politico noted today, “Florida Republicans want the GOP presidential field to tread lightly on the subjects of Social Security and Medicare. Very, very lightly.” Fifty-eight percent of Floridians say it is “unfair” to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme.

Yet, in last night’s debate, Perry managed to completely disavow this view and then suddenly re-embrace it again just one hour later. At about 9:30 last night, in response to a question from Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, Perry denied ever saying that Social Security is beyond the federal government’s power and therefore must be handled solely by state governments:

KELLY: Gov. Perry, Gov. Romney has been hammering you on your idea of turning Social Security back to the states. Repeatedly. Can you explain, specifically, how fifty separate social security systems are supposed to work? [...]

PERRY: Now, it’s not the first time that Mitt’s been wrong on issues before. And the bottom line is that we never said that we were going to move this back to the states.

Nevertheless, at about 10:30 last night, Perry changed position again — this time insisting that he is retreating “not an inch” from the positions he stated in his book. Watch both of Perry’s contradictory positions:

It’s clear at this point that Perry wants to create an image of himself that is firm and unwaivering, but that he also doesn’t want his candidacy to be tarred with any of the extremist positions he quite openly and honestly expressed before he decided to run for president. Perry can’t have it both ways, no matter how many times he tries. The bottom line is that Perry either needs to start being honest again about his desire to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and other essential programs that he believes to be unconstitutional, or he needs to candidly admit that he is reversing his entire stance on the Constitution.