Another great catch from Kevin Drum, this time on the ongoing battle between Clinton and Obama over Social Security. From the WashingtonPost:
Clinton, without naming Obama, also continued to blast him for proposing to the lift the cap on the taxing of Social Security benefits, which are currently taxed at 6 percent, but only on the first $97,000 of a person's income."We don't need more Republican scare tactics about a 'Social Security crisis,'" Clinton said. "And we don't need a trillion-dollar tax increase that will hit families already facing higher energy, health care and college costs.
Kevin's very legitimate complaint follows:
God almighty, is this the most dispiriting "controversy" ever between two Democrats? Obama was wrong to buy into the "crisis" language and wrong to try and make Social Security into a campaign issue in the first place. It's been dead since 2005, it's not a point of serious contention in the Democratic Party, and bringing it up seems like more of a pander to Tim Russert and the rest of the DC press corps than anything else.On the other hand, lifting the cap on the payroll tax is hardly the devil's snare Hillary is making it out to be, especially if it's phased in over a period of years. In fact, it may be the most thoroughly mainstream liberal approach to extending the solvency of Social Security there is.
Kevin's right to point out how ridiculous this squabble is. Obama no doubt means well, but Clinton is right when she claims that he's buying into Republican rhetoric when he claims there is some sort of crisis with Social Security. It's taken for granted about "serious" thinkers and media elites, but it is nevertheless a lie. If you actually read the data and track it over time, you'll see that even the most minimally pessimistic predictions about the system are wrong. Social Security isn't the problem. Medicare - and more broadly health care - is. And given that both the public and the media have only a very limited ability to focus on two things at once, any focus on Social Security is taking away focus somewhere else. So yes, I'm absolutely with Kevin on this one.
The problem is that he just doesn't go far enough. Clinton's complaint about Obama is that he is echoing "republican scare tactics." But then, having quite literally just leveled the complaint, she does precisely the same thing herself! "It's a tax increase! Aaaarrgh! Head for the hills!"
This all needs to stop. And it needs to stop now. Social Security is fine. Our health care system is not. And it may be necessary to raise taxes to fix it. Because as Ezra Klein once so profoundly said, "taxes pay for things." And health care is a very, very big thing. And besides, the relevant question here is not "will our taxes increase?" It is "on balance, after everything has been accounted for, will both individuals and society as a whole spend more on less in aggregate on health care after the system has been fixed?" If you look only at the impact on taxes you'll miss the point. And that, my friends, is the point that Hillary seems to miss.
Repeat after me: We are not their echo chamber. We are not their echo chamber. We are not.... not.... not...
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