FAIR..Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting..has pointed out for years how politicians and media are manipulating the social safety net by attacking seniors.
From 1991: a compilation of media attacks on the elderly.
Geezer-BashingBudget out of control, banks going bust, states and cities going broke, children going hungry -- who's to blame? For major media, no problem. It's elderly Americans.
In their drive to punish gray hair, big media give no quarter. There is no trial, no defense.
"Elderly, Affluent -- and Selfish", snarls a typical op-ed in the New York Times (10/10/89). "The 800-Pound Gorilla Vs. the Hungry Baby", growls a Washington Post column (10/22/90), referring to the invisible geezer lobby as an ape. Time magazine (11/26/90) says the country could work its way out of the hole it's in "by spending less on the elderly and more on preschoolers," but alas, "the elderly vote and preschoolers don't." Columnist Lars-Erik Nelson of the New York Daily News (10/22/90) proposes a cure for that: a Constitutional amendment denying the vote to everybody who gets a government check, like Social Security.
The reporter describes Nelson as "one of the more liberal members of the Washington press corps." He suggests he had just not heard the truth. Could be that, but could have been profitable for media and politicians to spout this ridiculous rhetoric.
"a Constitutional amendment denying the vote to everybody who gets a government check, like Social Security."...That sounds absurd enough to be a tenet of today's tea party.
...
"Anyway, the notion that this administration and this Congress would use money cut from programs for the elderly to feed hungry babies is as absurd as the other basic postulates of geezer-bashing: that the elderly as a class are rich (they are of course poorer than any other segment of adults); that they are especially selfish (they are more supportive of a cradle-to-grave healthcare system than any other group); and that they have overwhelming political clout.
In 1993 there was Jon Cowan, now president of the Third Way,
pleading with grandma and grandpa to stop demanding so much from the younger folks.
Dear Grandma and Grandpa:
We write to ask for your help. We're in a financial mess, and unless everyone in our family gets together to fix the problem, we're heading for "economic and fiscal catastrophe." That's not a phrase we picked up on MTV-it's from a recent U.S. government report on the budget deficit.
....."We are not ungrateful. We respect and value the sacrifices you've made for our country and have no desire to take money away from those in need. But our generation is in trouble. We were educated in a collapsing school system. Our incomes and skill levels are lower than any previous generation-by the year 2000 over one-third of younger Americans will be living in poverty. And we will be the first Americans to inherit a lower standard of living than our parents.
We're not asking that your generation solve all our problems. And there certainly are many other programs that also must be cut to get the deficit under control. But Social Security must be considered, just like everything else in the budget.
He should feel pretty good about things along about now. Social Security has been put on the table, and the Super Committee is now negotiating over it. Put on the table to be tinkered with by right wing extremists.
In 1997 John Hess at FAIR pointed out that they were still trying to "rescue" Social Security.
Here We Go Again. Can Social Security Survive Another "Rescue"?The rescue of Social Security has been a staple of American journalism for 20 years now—a story all the more remarkable in that Social Security has never been in peril except from its rescuers.
The rescues have all been based on faulty arithmetic. First, in 1977, the rescuers humbly confessed that they had made a mistake in adjusting benefits to inflation, as a result of which Social Security was threatening to go broke. (They never say the Army is threatening to "go broke," only that it needs more money to do the job that it's asked to do.) Not to worry. Amid the Yuletide hosannas of our massed punditry, our leaders found the courage to enact a correction that would, they swore, assure solvency into the 21st Century.
..."The solvency of Social Security was thus assured for 75 more years. The euphoria was such that when some new retirees learned that their benefits were taking a double hit and complained, they suffered the righteous wrath of the massed media. They were called "Greedy Geezers": "Avaricious," "spiteful" people who would snatch food from babies —a media image of America's elderly that persists to this day.
The Social Security crisis of 1983 was one of the boldest hoaxes in our political and journalistic history, so effective that even today few observers are aware of it. Leaving the new rescue package aside, Social Security income and outgo were roughly in balance, as they had been since its inception. Indeed, it ended 1983 with a surplus of $21.8 billion, thanks mainly to the fact that , now that the "crisis" was no longer required, Congress quietly handed over to Social Security some of the billions that the Pentagon had long owed the system.
In short, there had been no Social Security crisis, only a crisis of bad faith and bad reporting.
The right wing and media have done this geezer bashing for decades, but unfortunately now our party is chiming in.
Traditionally Democrats have stood firmly for the senior safety nets, but things are changing.
Now and then a Democratic leader will be honest and say that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. Then they say they have to put it on the table anyway. Their actions speak loudly...Obama's demand to extend the payroll tax cuts will put Social Security in jeopardy. His demand that the Super Committee find more and more in cuts is bound to harm ordinary people.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
Extending the payroll tax cut would unnecessarily place the benefits of millions of seniors at risk, warns The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), one of the nation's largest nonpartisan seniors groups.
"This is one tax cut that no member of Congress should vote to renew," says Larry Hyland, Chairman of TSCL. "It hasn't generated new payroll taxes, but it has been increasing the deficit and threatens our ability to pay benefits to 59 million people who rely on Social Security, including low to middle-income seniors and the disabled."Later today, President Obama will ask Congress to extend the two-percent payroll tax holiday (enacted in December 2010 and due to expire at the end of this year) as a way to boost the economy and create new jobs.
However, the unemployment rate is now higher than when the payroll tax cut began.According to the Congressional Budget Office, this year's tax cut will cost the Social Security system about $112 billion in lost revenue and borrowing costs. This is a significant blow to the already over-stretched program, which since last year has been paying out more in benefits than it receives in revenues. The federal government has been borrowing the difference to pay benefits. But during the recent debt limit battle, it became clear that Social Security benefits could not be guaranteed once the debt limit is reached.
Payroll Tax Cut Extension Puts Social Security Payments at RiskAnd now both Democrats and Republicans are freely talking about reforming Social Security. It is dangerous for our party to do that when they are dealing with extremists.
Those extremists have debates now with audiences that cheer and applaud when a governor brags about a large number of executions. They shout out "let him die" when a candidate for president as much as said that if you don't have insurance dying is one option.
Social Security should not be back on the table for the Super Committee to debate. A Democratic president should be pleading with this Super Committee to find more and bigger cuts. These are people who would destroy the country for their ideology, yet we are urged to keep compromising with them.
You can not compromise with these people. It is dangerous to try.
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