Abusing the SSA — redux
The administration just can’t seem to help itself. After having been caught abusing non-partisan government agencies for political purposes — HHS, Education, Treasury, among others — the Bush gang, one might think, would be hesitant about misusing the Social Security Administration. Instead, it turns out the SSA is being abused even more.
We learned several weeks ago, for example, that Americans who called the SSA and were put on hold were subjected to White House-approved political messages about the Social Security “crisis.” Since then, the abuse has only gotten worse.
For example, a high-ranking SSA official has hit the campaign trail with Republican lawmakers, offering, at a minimum, symbolic imprimatur for GOP privatization efforts.
In the midst of a fractious debate over changes to Social Security, a senior official of the agency that administers the program has been joining Republican members of Congress at public events around the country devised to promote personal retirement accounts.
James B. Lockhart III, the deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration, said Thursday that he had appeared with four Republican members in recent days to provide information, not to endorse the diversion of some payroll taxes to personal accounts. But several Democrats are objecting to Mr. Lockhart’s role in an aggressive campaign to promote administration proposals for restructuring Social Security.
“The administration is running one of the most sophisticated grassroots lobbying strategies in history, and they are using federal employees and taxpayer dollars to do it,” said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. “Social Security employees should be spending their time serving the needs of Social Security recipients, not advancing a political agenda.”
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the agency “is supposed to serve all the people and should not be giving the appearance that it is taking sides.”
“It is absolutely inappropriate for officials from the Social Security Administration to hit the hustings in support of the president’s plan,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement.
But wait, there’s more.
As Joe Conason explained today, the SSA is even spending tax dollars on a public relations firm as part of the privatization effort.
[W]e now know that the Bush administration regularly employs less transparent and more deceptive techniques to manipulate opinion. In pursuit of the president’s political goals, federal agencies have hired pundits with public funds — creating bogus news stories that appear on television — and the administration has permitted at least one fake news organization to infiltrate the White House press corps.
Are Bush appointees in the Social Security Administration concocting a similar propaganda effort to promote privatization? Reports last month in the Washington Post and the New York Times suggested that they are quietly doing just that. The newspapers obtained copies of a “national strategic communications plan” and a “communications/marketing tactical plan” prepared by SSA officials. Those documents indicate that the agency will place messages about the system’s “solvency” in traditional media, as well as in “outreach” efforts to consumers at “big-box stores” and “farmers markets.”
Evidently, the idea is to use the credibility of the Social Security Administration itself to undermine people’s confidence in the system. After all, the majority of Americans won’t necessarily believe arguments for privatization and against Social Security that emanate from Republican and business front groups. They are far more likely to respond to a warning from the most successful and efficient agency in the government.
The public has not yet seen the results of the p.r. strategy, only the scant details of a plan. That said, there are public records showing that the SSA has already entered into a $1.8 million consulting contract with Fleishman-Hillard, a massive DC-based public relations firm.
It just goes to show that the White House isn’t gearing up for a fair fight. They’re even ready to use non-partisan government agencies — and our money — to wage this fight on their carefully poll-tested terms.