Labor Campaign for Single Payer, August 9, 2010

On August 14, we will celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Social Security. Widely recognized as the most successful social program in US history, Social Security has lifted millions of senior citizens out of poverty. From orphaned children to disabled Americans, its supplemental programs provide an essential safety net to millions more. Together with Medicare, it exemplifies the social insurance model: providing coverage as a birthright to rich and poor alike with a single standard for all.

In all of its 75 year history - through recession, depression, inflation and stagflation, in war and in peace, whether the stock market was high or low - Social Security has never missed a scheduled payment to its beneficiaries and it has never added a dime to the federal deficit.

Incredibly, these bedrock programs are once again under assault. Plans are afoot to use the current debate over the federal deficit as a pretext for cutting and privatizing these national jewels. President Obama has appointed a Deficit Commission to make recommendations to Congress as early as this December.

It is all but certain that the Deficit Commission will recommend serious cuts in Social Security and Medicare. Some of the ideas being explored by the Commission include raising the retirement age as high as 70, replacing Medicare with individual vouchers to purchase private insurance, creating private investment accounts as an alternative or supplement to Social Security benefits and investing all or part of the Social Security Trust Fund in Wall Street-managed funds.

Despite all of the "sky is falling" rhetoric coming mainly from sources with a vested interest in dismantling the last remnants of the social safety net, the system is fundamentally sound. On August 5, the Social Security Trustees issued its annual report. The trustees described a program whose finances, while battered by the recession are "little changed from last year." The projected solvency of Medicare has actually improved by 12 years as a result of the recently enacted healthcare legislation.

The bottom line is this: Social Security is fully solvent through at least 2037 and Medicare through 2029. And there are simple, fair solutions that would ensure the long term solvency of Social Security. Instead of raising the retirement age to 70, which, a recent Center for Economic and Policy Research report shows, would adversely affect those 8.5 million Americans over the age of 58 employed in physically demanding jobs or other difficult working conditions, long term solvency can be achieved by eliminating the payroll cap for high earners and taxing all sources of income the same as wages.

The choices are clear: either require that bankers and stockbrokers pay the same percentage of their income into Social Security as do nurses and firefighters or force those nurses and firefighters to work until they are 70 years old.

The path to preservation of Medicare is even simpler: expand it to all in America. This will bring medical costs under control by eliminating private insurance and for-profit medicine.
We who support the fight to make healthcare a right for all have a special duty to work to preserve and expand Social Security and Medicare. Attacks on these programs are attacks on the very social insurance model that we seek to strengthen and expand. Cuts in these programs will make our fight even more difficult. Labor led the fight to establish Social Security and Medicare and labor must lead the fight to win healthcare for all.

What You Can Do:

• Join the Alliance for Retired Americans in events to celebrate the 75th Birthday of Social Security in a city near you.
• Send union delegations to meet with your Congressional representatives during the summer recess and demand that they sign a pledge that they will not vote to cut Social Security and Medicare.
• Consider making the theme of "Hands Off Our Social Security and Medicare" the focus of your local Labor Day events.

The situation today couldn't be more urgent. If the cutters and the privatizers have their way, the recommendations of the Deficit Commission will be considered by a lame duck Congress on a fast track basis. We must act now, before the November election, to ensure that Congress does not vote to cut these essential programs.