The Obama Campaign now seems to be coming out in favor of the status quo regarding the financial security of our American senior citizens. They continue to state their adamant opposition to reforming Social Security (and Medicare, which is part of the Social Security system) at all. Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden made that refusal explicit a few days ago during a Virginia campaign stop:
I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security. I flat guarantee you.
The opposition summarized by Biden has been so long-lasting and, of late, so shrill, that it seems the Progressives are afraid of freeing up the programs, of freeing up us American citizens to take care of ourselves away from the watchful eye and controlling hand of government.
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D, FL) expresses Progressive fear this way:
The very last thing we ought to be doing is putting at risk the retirement security of millions of America’s seniors.
And yet, she chooses not to address the plain and simple fact that, with our retirement security in the hands of government, with government making funding and disbursement decisions for millions of us, we have no retirement security: Social Security will be bankrupt in just a few short years (it’s already paying out far more than it’s taking in, and the Social Security trustees say the funds will be exhausted by 2033), and Medicare is in worse shape.
Wasserman’s plaint is especially cynical in light of the fact that, for the last three-plus years, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama—and his fellow Progressives in Congress—have chosen to offer no solution to this at all, save taking $700 billion dollars from America’s seniors’ Medicare in order to give it to his precious Obamacare, and otherwise, as Biden has assured us all, to refuse any change.
Wasserman, et al., also are objecting to a reform that would put more freedom and responsibility in the hands of us citizens: the specific proposal to which Wasserman was objecting (and which, sadly, has been absent from the last two (Republican) House-passed Federal budgets) would have allowed us to take a significant portion of our Social Security taxes and invest those funds in our own retirement accounts, managed by us without government interference.
Why are the Progressives so afraid of letting American citizens make our own choices, be responsible for our own lives? Do they think we’re just too stupid to manage our own futures, that we’re dumber than government? Or are they simply afraid of losing the power that comes from the dependency of others on them, and so their own retirement security?