McCain on Social Security — four contradictory positions (and counting)

August 4, 2008

John McCain has said, repeatedly and on the record, that he would never consider raising payroll taxes as part of a Social Security reform effort. Asked in March if there are “any circumstances” in which he would consider this, even as part of negotiations with congressional Democrats, McCain said, “No. None. None.” Got it. Clear as a bell.

Eight days ago, however, McCain changed his mind and said the exact opposite, explaining that a payroll tax increase is on the table, much to the consternation of conservative activists.

Just 48 hours later, Tucker Bounds, McCain’s chief spokesperson, went back to the original position, telling Fox News that McCain considers a payroll tax increase “absolutely out of the question.” A day later, McCain slammed Barack Obama for wanting to raise payroll taxes and told a Colorado audience that he is “opposed to raising taxes on Social Security.”

And yesterday, McCain’s team reversed course once again.

According to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a leading McCain campaign surrogate, a payroll tax increase is “on the table,” and could be included as part of “a comprehensive approach.”

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) responded, “[W]e don’t know what we’re going to get with John McCain. The more he talks, the less certain we are about any of the positions he’s taken.”

Tell me about it.

It’s worth noting that McCain’s approach to a payroll tax increase seems relatively similar to Obama’s approach to increased coastal drilling — it’s an unwelcome idea that might be necessary to get opponents on board with a more comprehensive bill.

In other words, Obama doesn’t support increased coastal drilling, but if it’s the price of getting broad support for a comprehensive energy bill, so be it. And McCain doesn’t like the idea of a payroll tax increase, but if it’s part of a broader reform effort, he’s open to it (and closed to it, and open to it, and closed to it….).

In Lindsey Graham’s case, the McCain surrogate said a payroll tax increase could be included as part of “a comprehensive approach,” but he nevertheless believes the increase would be “a dumb idea.”

Except, as Sam Stein noted, Graham used to hold a very different position on this.

How dumb an idea could raising taxes be? After all, back during the heyday of the Social Security privatization debate in 2005, it was Graham who was pushing the concept of a Social Security “donut hole” tax, in which the system would be buoyed by revenue raised from taxing the first, say, $90,000 of income and the later $300,000 plus. At the time, the South Carolina Republican, who advocated taking a portion of that revenue to create voluntary personal retirement accounts, was winning plaudits from some reform minded Republicans and scorn from the conservative base.

As George Will put it aptly in a March 11, 2005, column in the Washington Post: “Now [Graham] has an idea that makes some Republicans throw up: Raise the current $90,000 limit on income subject to Social Security taxes. Republicans who throw up should grow up. Intelligent people can differ about whether Graham’s suggestion is economically unwise or politically imprudent. However, it hardly blurs the distinction between conservatism and Bolshevism. The Social Security tax rate has been increased 20 times in 70 years, and the cap on income subject to the tax is indexed to average wages and adjusted annually.”

Now, however, Graham seems firmly entrenched in what Will would describe as the raising-taxes-makes-me-throw-up camp.

When Daschle said, “The more he talks, the less certain we are about any of the positions he’s taken,” he was talking about McCain, but it seems to apply to McCain’s supporters, too.

McCain’s campaign is simply giving voters a choice – whatever position on an issue they prefer, McCain’s got it for them. Give the customers what they want. Simple.

  • “It’s worth noting that McCain’s approach to a payroll tax increase seems relatively similar to Obama’s approach to increased coastal drilling”

    Good point – Obama should know that you don’t start negotiating from a point of “compromise”. You don’t say “I’ll give in on this” because now you don’t hold that bargaining chip any more.

    Dammit, this is why Edwards was such a good pick, you can’t reason with these frauds, you’ve gotta FIGHT ‘EM.

  • I don’t think that McCain actually remembers from day to day what his position is – on anything!

    It looks to me like the campaign staff works out policy positions with McCain, then McCain gets out campaigning and goes off the reservation. It’s not that McCain is a flip-flopper – he just doesn’t remember.

    A few men might be mentally and physically able to serve effectively as President of the United States at age 72 and counting. But McCain is old for his age.

  • People don’t seem to have noticed that the McCain camp is perfecting the technique of saying something while simultaneously denying they are saying it. McCain says everything is one the table, but McCain is against raising taxes. Thus, it can tell the base he is one of them and is adamantly against raising taxes, but he can claim to independents that he is a reasonable, non-ideolgue because he is willing to discuss everything. On Iraq, he is against timetables for bringing the troops home, but 16 months sounds good. McCain has perfected the “universal pander”. And he will get away with it since the MSM will not call him on it.

  • This is really freaking weird.

    What’s the strategy here? Who is McCain trying to sway with this? Has the AARP been breathing down his neck or something?

    Making Social Security any kind of issue in this election is a losing proposition for the Republicans. They don’t really have a clear message other than “we don’t like it, nosir, we don’t”, which is an opinion that is out of the mainstream among the general population. Talking about tax increases to support the system makes Republicans mad. Talking about doing nothing (after Republicans have spent the decades since Reagan convincing folks that the system is in imminent danger of collapse) makes everyone else mad.

    The McCain camp should be trying to change the subject. And you can’t do that if you’re out there changing your opinion every week. What the hell are they doing? This is screwy – and it’s another bit of evidence that the McCain camp is incompetent at anything but slinging mud. (Unfortunately, they appear to have the equivalent of nineteen PhDs in mudslinging, and it may be enough to squeak out a win this cycle…)

  • I’m feeling a little pedantic today, so I apologize in advance . . . .

    Social Security is an issue that’s defined by the undeniable logic of numbers — which is why Republicans take such irrational positions on it.

    Social Security’s fiscal problems are simple — there are not enough people paying FICA taxes into the system to cover the number of people being paid benefits. When Social Security began, approximately 25 workers were paying taxes into the system for every one person receiving benefits. Today approximately three workers pay taxes into the system to support each person getting benefits. The Social Security Administration estimates that by 2030 only two workers will be paying into the system for each person receiving benefits.

    So since there is no way for Republicans to imagine that a “magic growth fairy” will come along and sprinkle free market pixies dust over everything and solve the problem, we have to choose between some hard choices:

    1) We can raise the age people can receive benefits.

    2) We can raise the taxes that people are paying into the system.

    3) We can raise the cut off point (cap) where people’s income stops being taxed.

    4) We can finance Social Security benefits with deficit spending (I never understood why this is always “off the table”. If we can finance an unnecessary war with deficit spending . . . . )

    5) We can make the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country legal so they can start paying into the system (many of them already do, even though as things stand they will never collect the benefits), and we can drastically increase the number of new immigrants we allow into the country each year.

    6) We can all start having more children, They’ll start working around 2030, but that kind of pushes the problem down the road for a generation.

    Hard choices. But then, that’s what our elected representatives are supposed to do in exchange for their six-figure salaries (and very generous pensions).

  • TomB said:
    I like your quick analysis of the Social Security system. Nice job.

    Thanks.

    There is one more “solution”, one that the Republicans like to talk about. But until I get some questions answered, I don’t consider it a viable option.

    In the late 1990s tech stocks prices were driven up to unjustified and unsustainable levels. This “bubble” was caused by millions of amateur investors who heard anecdotes about people becoming millionaires overnight and tried to get in on the “tech boom” by buying tech stocks, and especially initial stock offerings by unproven companies, at any price.

    So what would happen when 100 million investors all started competing for the same lucrative stocks? Won’t supply and demand drive those stock prices through the roof? Won’t demand drive all other stock prices up to unreasonable and unsustainable levels? Won’t the “privatization bubble” make the tech “bubble” and the housing “bubble” seem miniscule by comparison?

    I haven’t heard anyone pose these questions.

  • McCain: Read my lips, whatever you want, it’s a definite maybe! I don’t remember where I stand!

  • For a guy who only shows up four to five days a week, he should remember more better. Is fumblemouth part of the charm? Look how it worked for W, Mr. 23%.
    I hang with lots of guys his age. None are as confused as he is. There’s something there, maybe PTSD that blocks out vast portions of his memory, both short and long term. With W, it’s pretty obviously alcohol poisoning. What’s with McC?

  • 7.On August 4th, 2008 at 9:45 am, SteveT said:
    So since there is no way for Republicans to imagine that a “magic growth fairy” will come along and sprinkle free market pixies dust over everything and solve the problem, we have to choose between some hard choices:

    The thing is, Social Security was already fixed several times before, most comprehensively under Reagan. SS will continue taking in a surplus for another decade and be solvent for long after that. The only catch is that Congress has to pay back everything they stole from the trust fund over the years. That money was for social security, not the military and other excesses.

  • I know this is silly, but after looking the flip-flop graphic, I want to call the Senator from Arizona “weather vane McCain” (I bet some has done this long ago).

  • Steve T.:
    Yes, a great analysis. I wish more people would push suggestion #5, but then I live in Brooklyn, and every day I get to see and enjoy the wonderful diversity immigration brings. (Gawd, I’d hate to live anywhere where people were all the same. “All the people had no faces and the streets they had no names…”)

    And what may surprise some of you is how well the groups get along, particularly — here in Midwood — the Jews (many of whom make regular trips to Israel) and the Pakistanis. But if you are ever here during the school year, go to the corner of East 13th and Coney Island Avenue when the local high school is letting out, and see how the groups walking together are so mixed.

  • one issue that is hardly ever discussed is the demise of the “Baby Boomer” generation.
    How will the Social security funding look after they are gone?

  • You have heard Social Security called an entitlement. The Republican neo-cons have plans to do away with Social Security as we know it. This may be the one govt program that works and works well. The benefits paid to retirees and the disabled are not government paid entitlements but instead they are the 7.65% tax deducted from your paychecks and matched by the 7.65% paid to the program by your employer as part of your remuneration. You EARNED it. The U.S. govt did not make the deposits into this so called Trust Fund, NOT ONE PENNY. They have two urgent teasons to change the fundamentals of the program. The first and foremost being the over $2 trillion they have borrowed from the Soc SEc Trust fund does not have to be repaid since the program will have been replaced by a new Soc Sec program and the second is to pander to their corporate contributors by doing away with the employer portion of the tax. Republicans and Democrats in power have raided our Trust Fund and don’t want to repay it. They can legally albeit immorally achieve this by passing an amendment to the Soc Sec Act. That money was removed from your paycheck for the stated purpose of being held in a Trust Fund to fund the Soc Sec program. The employer portion was part of your salary for your work. You earned it all! It has been used at the will of the borrowers with not so much as a by your leave to the owners of that Trust Fund, the U.S. workers. The unmitigated gall of those supporting this private accounts revision to Soc Sec will continue using scare tactics to achieve this. The plain truth is they need to repay the Soc Sec Trush fund while raising the contribution level from the current income level cut off of $102,000 and we will once again have a healthy Social Security fund.

  • Great post Dottie! We need to find a way to keep hammering it home that we paid for it and we earned it and that it is NOT an entitlement program.

  • McCain slammed Barack Obama for wanting to raise payroll taxes and told a Colorado audience that he is “opposed to raising taxes on Social Security.”

    A bit confused there I think. Payroll taxes are taxes FOR Social Security. Of course Social Security, being a form of income, is taxed if the receipient gets enough income to fall into a taxable rate. But I know of no one suggesting that tax go up. In fact I think Obama is talking about reducing the taxes on retirees.

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