Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Senate Majority Whip, repeats a cynical GOP lie about Social Security on Fox News Sunday this morning.
WALLACE: I'm going to talk about Obamacare in a second, but you're not answering my question. Why does taxes -- why do taxes have to be on the table? Why can't you just make a deal, short-term spending for long-term entitlement reform -- which, Senator, you support and President Obama supports. You have supported the idea of some entitlement reform.
DURBIN: That's right. I do, and I'll tell you why -- because Social Security is going to run out of money in 20 years. I want to fix it now, before we reach that cliff. Medicare may run out of money in 10 years, let's fix it now. And that means addressing the skyrocketing cost of health care. That's what Obamacare is focused on, and yet, the Republicans want nothing to do with it.
If we don't focus on the health care and dealing with the entitlements, the baby boom generation is going to blow away our future. We don't want to see that happen. We want to make sure that Social Security and Medicare are solid.
Social Security is not going to run out of money in twenty years. That's an out-and-out falsehood.
Social Security is not running out of money. He is likely referring to the projected date–2033–when the Social Security system will have exhausted its multi-trillion dollar trust fund. But if no changes are made to the program whatsoever, the program will pay out 75 percent of scheduled benefits until the year 2086.
That is not at all the same thing as "running out of money." And linking a program that needs modest changes to remain fully funded over a 75-year window to a "clear and present danger" to the country is misleading.
It's one thing to have a debate built around the question of whether the United States will become the next Greece. (There are plenty of people who would argue the comparison is fundamentally off-base.) But it's even more difficult to have that kind of discussion when the "facts" used to make that comparison are misleading.
Sen. Dick Durbin has been supporting changing the paying out of Social Security benefits, tying it to chained-CPI, which is essentially a cut in benefits to the elderly of this country and will do nothing to help reform the program. Note that Durbin does not bring up the far more sensible removal of the cap, which would end any issue of funding for Social Security forever.
President Obama knows that the base is aghast at this proposal coming from a Democratic president, but Senator Durbin is more than happy to help appease the Republican hostage-takers by inflicting more hurt on the elderly, vets, the disabled and the poor.
Senator Durbin, please stop acting like a hack WSJ conservative and act like a politician that was elected to look out for the middle class. Saying Social Security is going broke in twenty years is only meant to frighten the people and Villagers into believing a lie.
