Your team for protecting Social Security
Vice President Joe Biden has expanded the debate that's got Republicans scared. This is
pretty darned unequivocal.
Vice President Joe Biden told cafe patrons in Virginia on Tuesday that he could "guarantee" he and President Obama would allow no changes to Social Security. [...]
"Hey, by the way, let's talk about Social Security," Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn't talking about changing the popular entitlement program.
"Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security," Biden said, per a pool report. "I flat guarantee you."
That's a really nice reminder of what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will be doing their damnedest to not talk about at all. Already, Paul Ryan has avoided
discussing his plans for Social Security, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have them. His 2010 budget proposal included privatizing the program, allowing workers to divert as much as 40 percent of their payroll taxes into private investments, a slow walk plan that would divert money away from the Social Security Trust Fund and weaken it. That idea, which Romney has endorsed since at least 2007, was unpopular enough that Ryan didn't include it in his latest budget. But he
did include
measures that would fast-track Social Security cuts in the future.
But that doesn't mean Ryan's abandoned his Social Security privatization scheme, something he's been pushing for years. In fact, in 2004, he had a privatization bill that was so extreme, the Bush administration called it "irresponsible." Just ponder that for a moment. The only president to propose Social Security privatization in the history of the program rejected Paul Ryan's idea as irresponsible.
No wonder Republicans everywhere are in utter panic. Heckuva job, Mitt.