ABC and CBS admit Social Security is in trouble, but why can’t the left?
“In 10 years time, Social Security will be paying out more in benefits than it takes in taxes and about the time the last of the baby boomers retires, the system will go bankrupt,” ABC correspondent David Wright said on the October 15 “World News Tonight with Charles Gibson.” “Of course it's perfectly obvious how to fix it, either raise taxes or cut benefits. But, politicians have been unwilling to do either.”
ABC and CBS admit Social Security is in trouble, but why can’t the left?
“In 10 years time, Social Security will be paying out more in benefits than it takes in taxes and about the time the last of the baby boomers retires, the system will go bankrupt,” ABC correspondent David Wright said on the October 15 “World News Tonight with Charles Gibson.” “Of course it's perfectly obvious how to fix it, either raise taxes or cut benefits. But, politicians have been unwilling to do either.”
Both networks cited conservative experts – Michael Tanner from The Cato Institute and David John from The Heritage Foundation – who pointed out the looming fiscal problems involving Social Security.
That’s in stark contrast of what liberal Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton thinks about Social Security.
“I think what I owe the American people is to tell them I will not spook them and sound the alarm over Social Security because that’s not merited,” Clinton said. “We have time to deal with this problem. I will deal with it in a responsible fashion.”
That’s similar to the foresight Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed when he signed Social Security into law in 1935, as Wright pointed out.
“Franklin Roosevelt did not foresee how a population boom might affect the program he created,” Wright said. “At the end of World War II, there were 44 workers paying Social Security taxes for every retiree collecting from the program. Now the ratio is just three to one and soon, there will be more retirees than workers.”
Although politicians haven’t been willing to “either raise taxes or cut benefits” thus far as Wright pointed out, some did attempt to confront this problem in 2005.
President George W. Bush, with a Republican-controlled Congress, proposed personal saving accounts to prop up the ailing Social Security system. But the same media outlets now reporting concerns about the solvency of Social Security weren’t onboard with any of those ideas then.
“Democrats argue that the time is running out for the president to make that case,” Terry Moran said about Bush’s proposed personal accounts on ABC’s March 3, 2005,
