In today's
WaPo there appears another article in ther SS analysis series, their lede:
In just 14 years, the nation's Social Security system is projected to reach a day of reckoning: Retiree benefits will exceed payroll tax receipts, and to pay its bills the system will have to begin redeeming billions of dollars in special Treasury bonds that have piled up in its trust fund. To redeem those bonds, which represent money taken in years when Social Security ran a surplus and used for other government operations, the federal government would likely have to cut other programs, raise taxes or borrow more money.
more below the fold
What follows, if you read the entire piece, is a fairly cogent summation of the situation, including this very telling point:
Peter R. Orszag, a Brookings Institution economist who heads the Pew Charitable Trusts' bipartisan Retirement Security Project, countered that there are less drastic ways to cover the cost of trust fund redemptions than Bush is contemplating. The White House could consider rolling back its tax cuts, the size of which, he said, dwarf Social Security's funding deficit. Over 75 years, the president's tax cuts will cost the Treasury $11 trillion, nearly triple Social Security's gap during that time.
"I do think they are trying to create an artificial sense of crisis," Orszag said.
All well and good, but this statement doesn't appear until the 6th paragraph. While the headline reads: Revamping Social Security: Experts Disagree on Severity of Shortfall's Consequences, which implies the common wisdomness of Repug common wisdom:
- Revamp taken as a given
- There is a shortfall
- Said shortfall is "severe" though we may argue about degree
The point I want to make is about the problem we have with all MSM: Crises sell papers/get ratings.
Therefore, our very rational message, that there is no "crisis" will get very little column space or airtime, while the Shrubcorp talking heads will get to preach their messages of fear and doom endlessly.
I don't have an answer here, but it truly seems to me that unless we can come up with a sexier counter message we're screwed.
Shrubcorp may be inept at actual governance, but they are truly masterful at wringing "crisis" headlines out of the MSM, and nevermind that the so-called crises are of their own making.
Update [2005-1-2 18:19:28 by CaliBlogger]: OK I feel a (tiny) bit more optomistic in the light of day (though saddened by Bob Matsui's death, as a politically aware Asian-American he's been a role-model).
Anyway, as much as it bothers me that the CW is against us, there is (I suppose) some reason for hope.
- We're on the right side of this, but we knew that.
- Political self-interest. With God, deficit-hawks and the AARP on our side, we have a chance.
- Frames: Crisis: GOP trying to kill SS; Safety net for your mom v. $2 trillion in "Wall Street Welfare" (I think I coined that 2nd part myself!)
As for defeatism, yeah sometimes I feel like Sisyphus back at the bottom of the hill. But I believe it's important to take stock of just how bad things are in order to most effectively develop our own strategery.
As we've so vividly discovered, just because something is self-evident to US, doesn't mean its self-evident to everyone.