Barack Obama has made it a point of his candidacy to argue that
Republicans have exploited the 9/11 tragedy for political gain, and
he has promised, if elected president, to move us beyond the
"politics of fear." He has chastized Republicans, including
President Bush and John McCain in recent days, for distorting his
views. But apparently, his opposition to the "politics of fear"
only applies when Republicans are talking about threats to our
national security. When the topic is Social Security, Obama
evidently has no problem spreading fear, and lying about his
opponents poisition to scare up votes among a demographic group
that has given him problems in the primaries.
The AP reports, that
while campaigning in Oregon:
Democrat Barack Obama told seniors Sunday that
Republican John McCain would threaten the Social Security that they
and millions like them depend on because he supports privatizing
the program....
Obama said McCain would push to raise the retirement
age for collecting Social Security benefits or trim annual
cost-of-living increases. Obama has rejected both ideas as
solutions to the funding crisis projected for Social Security in
favor of making higher-income workers pay more into the system.
"We have to protect Social Security for future
generations without pushing the burden onto seniors who have earned
the right to retire in dignity," he said.
Anybody who is intellectually honest knows that none of the
proposals on the table to allow workers to voluntarily invest a
small percentage of payroll taxes in stock/bond funds would affect
todays seniors, and the Bush proposal that McCain supported
explicitly took anybody over the age of 55 off of the table. For
Obama go to senior citizens center and spook them into thinking
that McCain is a threat to their retirement security, is a patently
dishonest, dare I say, "smear." Obama claims to represent a "new
kind of politics" but scaring senior citizens into thinking that
the big bad Republicans are going to take away their retirement
money is the oldest dirty trick in the Democratic playbook.
It's worth noting, in closing, that among other approaches Obama
would consider on Social Secuirty would be raising the current
payroll tax cap beyond $97,000 -- this despite his pledge to not
raise taxes for Americans making less than $200,000.
topics:
Taxes, John McCain, Barack Obama, Social Security
