{"id":16149,"date":"2008-07-10T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T14:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16149.html"},"modified":"2008-07-10T10:00:21","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T14:00:21","slug":"mccains-disgrace-on-social-security-percolates-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccains-disgrace-on-social-security-percolates-along\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain’s ‘disgrace’ on Social Security percolates along"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, John McCain told <\/a>a town-hall audience in Denver, “Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace, and it’s got to be fixed.”<\/p>\n

A phalanx of campaign reporters were on hand to hear this, but not a single one thought to report it. Bloggers and the DNC, however, began pushing this rather aggressively yesterday, and the grudging reporters who make up McCain’s “base” apparently decided they couldn’t ignore it anymore. Wednesday afternoon, the AP finally did an item<\/a>, and CNN’s Jack Cafferty questioned why McCain doesn’t seem to understand how Social Security works.<\/p>\n

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“You’d think a guy who spent 20 years in the United States Senate would be more aware of how that system operates,” Cafferty said<\/a> of McCain.<\/p>\n

Now, I have to admit, I really thought this would be a huge story. It’s hard to ever know for sure what reporters will pick up on, but if the national media can obsess for four days on Wesley Clark’s innocuous and accurate comments about McCain’s presidential qualifications, I figured John McCain describing the Social Security system as an “absolute disgrace” would dominate the political landscape.<\/p>\n

That, apparently, hasn’t happened, at least not yet. That said, a handful of reporters did feel compelled to at least raise the subject with McCain and his campaign, inviting him to explain what he meant in Monday’s town-hall event.<\/p>\n

The explanation didn’t really make any sense, given the original quote.
\n
\nHere’s the spin<\/a> from yesterday afternoon:<\/p>\n

McCain sought to clarify his remarks yesterday afternoon on the Straight Talk Express. Young people, he said, “are paying so much that they are paying into a system that they won’t receive benefits from on its present track that it’s on — that’s the point.”<\/p>\n

The Social Security trustees “have clearly stated it’s going to go bankrupt,” he said, adding that this is what he meant when he called the system a disgrace. “I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “I don’t think it’s fair, and I think it’s terrible to ask people to pay in to a system that they won’t receive benefits from. That’s why we have to fix it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nice try, senator. First, the system isn’t going bankrupt; that was Bush’s line in 2005, and it was proven wrong then, too. Second, the explanation for Monday’s remarks doesn’t match the remarks themselves:<\/p>\n

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McCain was describing a pay-as-you-go system as an “absolute disgrace.” The words are clear, plain, and unambiguous. And lest anyone think McCain just got confused on Monday, the next day he appeared on CNN and reiterated the exact same sentiment<\/a>: “[Younger people] pay their taxes and right now their taxes are going to pay the retirement of present-day retirees. That\u2019s why it\u2019s broken, that\u2019s why we can fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Social Security, McCain argues, is “broken” because of the way the system has been structured since its inception. As Josh Marshall put it<\/a>, “In other words, there’s no question that John McCain thinks that the problem with Social Security is the way it was designed at the very beginning, the way it was always designed to work.”<\/p>\n

As far as I can tell, reporters seem to think, “Well, we knew what he meant, so this isn’t a huge deal.” This is crazy. For one thing, it’s not reporters’ job to reinterpret what a candidates says in order to make the comments less controversial. For another, reporters knew what Wesley Clark meant — as well as what Obama meant when he said he’d continue to “refine” his Iraq policies — but that didn’t stop them from manufacturing a media frenzy for no reason.<\/p>\n

Look, Social Security matters. It’s arguably the most popular and successful government program in American history. John McCain a) wants to privatize it<\/a>; b) doesn’t understand how it works<\/a>; and c) can’t talk about it without contradicting himself<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m probably being overly optimistic, but I still think this matters, and may very well have an effect on Election Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, John McCain told a town-hall audience in Denver, “Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace, and it’s got to be fixed.” A phalanx of campaign reporters were on hand to hear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}