In this dishonest, disingenuous and cynical Fox News Sunday discussion, Sen. Bill Cassidy tries to scare viewers into supporting changes to Social Security in the false guise of saving it, with a big assist from "objective" Fox anchor Shannon Bream.
Cassidy (R-LA) was yet another Republican proving President Biden right and the Fox News poutrage wrong when he accused the GOP of wanting to cut or do away with Social Security and Medicare. And just like other Republicans I’ve seen on Fox News, Cassidy promoted his cuts as the only way to save Social Security. Spoiler alert: they aren’t.
The New Republic delves into various possibilities but the short answer to saving the programs without cutting them amounts to this: eliminate the $160,200 income cap on Social Security and Medicare taxes, otherwise known as FICA tax. As it stands now, TNR notes, LeBron James pays the same flat tax of 15% as the rest of us but only on $160,200 of his $44.5 million salary. To put it another way, $44.3 million of his salary is exempt.
But that fix was completely left out of Fox News Sunday’s discussion in which both Cassidy and Bream fear-mongered that the programs must be altered now or face worse cuts later.
Bream’s opening question on the subject was a good example of Fox pseudo-journalism. She adopted a mantle of objectivity when she really gave Cassidy a platform for his opinion, unchallenged and uncomplicated by any independent reporting.
BREAM: [The White House] says the president’s budget is about protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security. You said that's not exactly true, at least not a conversation about how to get there.
Here's a bit of an exchange with you and the treasury secretary a couple of weeks ago.
[After the video clip]
BREAM: Okay. Essentially calling the treasury secretary a liar there about the engagement from the White House.
Have you heard anything from the president about this very real problem?
Cassidy clarified that he was not calling Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen a liar but that the claims from the White House wanting to work with Congress on Social Security were a lie. Cassidy said he and the GOP hoped to meet with Biden “so that somebody who is a current beneficiary will not see her benefits cut by 24 percent, we have not heard anything on our request.”
Notice that Cassidy is very clearly not saying he wants to protect benefits for anyone who’s not a current beneficiary and he’s trying to frighten viewers into thinking they’re in danger of losing a good chunk of their own benefits because of Biden.
To be fair, Cassidy is working in a bipartisan fashion to improve the finances of Social Security, as Reuters reports. But not mentioned by Cassidy or Bream is that, according to Reuters, part of the senators' plan is to shore it up with a fund invested in the riskier stock market instead of the lower-yielding but secure Treasury securities the funds are now invested in.
Cassidy continued:
CASSIDY: [T]he president has a plan for Social Security and his plan is to have no plan. He and, frankly, President Trump, former President Trump, are both telling the American people that there is no issue with Social Security and you don't have to do anything about it -- because I think they think it's a political third rail.
The third rail of Social Security should be allowing it to get a 24 percent cut. That's what's going to happen. And we've learned yesterday or Friday that it's going to happen a year earlier than it originally was going to.
That should be the third rail. We should be working to prevent that 24 percent cut. And so far, the two leading candidates for either re-election or election are refusing to acknowledge.
Actually, Biden does have a plan and it involves raising taxes. The New Republic criticizes it as not going far enough but there is a plan. But Bream didn’t mention it. She seemed more interested in promoting Cassidy’s fear mongering.
BREAM: Yeah, to that point, you cite this. So, the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund we're told is insolvent by 2031. Social Security Trust Fund is insolvent by 2034.
Bream did go on to point out that a Fox News poll found that 71% want to keep Social Security and Medicare untouched. Then she played a clip of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat routinely demonized on Fox, as an example of “how Democrats are going to play this.” By coincidence, I’m sure, the clip made it sound as though Social Security and Medicare are welfare.
OMAR: Republicans have made it perfectly clear they do not want to govern. They would rather target vulnerable communities, scapegoat minorities. They would rather gut Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, slash SNAP and housing assistance that makes sure people have the housing and healthcare they need.
Then Bream validated Cassidy’s fearmongering-for-Social-Security-cuts schtick:
BREAM: So Democrats are going to say, you guys are going to rip apart entitlements. Our polling shows people are afraid for those programs to be touched. But at the same time, you touch on the insolvency that's coming and the automatic cuts that will happen if you guys don't act. So, how do you work against all of those tides to actually get a substantive conversation going?
CASSIDY: So, Shannon, you put your finger on it. If 71% of Americans don't want Social Security touched, per the poll you just quoted, under current law, if we do nothing, those benefits will be touched. They will be mashed down by 24 percent because this president and the leading Republican candidate refuse to take the issue on. Oh, they're going to be cut.
People need their benefit, not just that they want them. For many, that's how they pay their bills. But under current law, it will be cut by 24 percent because neither of two leading candidates will take the issue on.
That's frustrating, and that is working against the interest of the American people. That's what we should be -- that's what we should be discussing.
BREAM: Well, it is something you're bringing to the forefront. Lot of people are afraid to touch it because they know how it's going to be used against them, even broaching the topic.
And we'll watch and see what you do on this. It's a very important point you make -- the cuts are coming if nobody does anything.
The cuts would not be looming if Republicans were willing to lift the cap and make the wealthy pay what the rest of us pay. But that option was never mentioned. I think we know why.
You can watch the pseudo-journalism below, from the April 2, 2023 Fox News Sunday.
This woman is supposedly a faithful servant of her lord Jesus, even writing books like ‘The Women and Daughters of the Bible Speak’ and ‘Love Stories of the Bible Speak’, for Christ’s sake! If the religious overlay is not just another pretend thing to help her career along, Shannon must be tearing herself to pieces internally. If you’re reading this, Ms Bream, I pity you.
To be clear for the 3759th time, there is absolutely no need to cut either Social Security or Medicare. Both programs are fine to continue paying benefits, but have been threatened by angry Right Wingers like Cassidy, Rick Scott, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee and others who oppose the very existence of those programs.
In reality, these programs have regularly seen adjustments to their funding (ie tiny tax increases and tiny changes to their structuring), most recently in the 1980s by a bipartisan majority of Congress at that time. Since then, the Republicans have refused to make common sense adjustments, preferring to avoid action and instead make the nonsensical threats that Cassidy does hear about how “these programs are about to be insolvent”. If Cassidy would simply do his job and stop obstructing the process, there would be no need to discuss his imagined “insolvency”.
As Ellen notes, the GOP has regularly been extremely sneaky about their methodology here. They discuss maintaining SS for the current recipients (ie a large part of the GOP voting base) but taking it away from as much of the rest of FICA contributors as they can. Their threat to allow SS to hit a shortfall is nothing less than the GOP saying that they’d rather threaten current retirees with a 20% reduction in payments than make the same adjustments to the programs that Republicans and Dems previously made without the current obstructionism.
The simple adjustments that Dems have proposed for over 20 years include the lifting of the cap that Ellen mentions. They also include expanding the number of government employees who pay into FICA and receive SS (currently 25% do not). There’s also a slight increase in the employer side of FICA contributions, which would have been 0.2 or 0.3% if the GOP wouldn’t have blocked it in 2004 and probably will be closer to 1% now. And yes, there’s almost certainly going to be a slight raise in the eligibility age from 67 to either 68 or 69 over a 10-20 year period, something Dems would have apply to workers under the age of 25 once the GOP stops blocking progress here.
I remind everyone that SS and Medicare are programs that workers regularly pay into from their weekly paychecks. SS is not available to people who have not paid into it. It’s not a handout – it’s a public insurance program where workers pay in for decades and then receive the funds back during their retirements. One of the dirtiest tricks the GOP has pulled in this discussion is the attempted labeling of SS and Medicare as “entitlements” rather than “repayments”.
So to be very clear, the intent of angry Right Wingers like Cassidy is NOT to “save” Social Security but to get rid of it. Because angry Right Wingers never wanted it to exist in the first place. Their approach since 2000 has been to refuse to make any common sense adjustments and threaten to let the programs hit shortfalls if they can’t make massive cuts. The only actual “plans” we’ve seen from angry Right Wingers have been from the Heritage Foundation and the “Republican Study Committee” in the House late in 2022, as well as these occasional feints about diverting FICA withholding into “private accounts”. (And those diversions would intentionally starve SS of funding even faster). The Heritage and RSC programs explicitly discuss changing SS into a flat payment of $1200 per month and means-testing that amount so that anyone with a pension or solid 401K would be deemed ineligible. That’s on top of an aggressively fast increase of retirement age to 70, and applying these massive cuts to everyone up to 54 and 55 years old today.
If angry Right Wingers were to get their way and make these massive cuts to people up to their 50s, the GOP’s hope is that the long-held public support for these programs would quickly fall away, which would make it much easier for the GOP to propose completely eliminating them as close as they can to the 100 year anniversary of the creation of SS.
Finally, the GOP nonsense about “we’ll never ever ever raise taxes” is a proven canard. Where was Cassidy or any other angry Right Winger’s concern when Middle Class Employees were socked with a massive tax increase in the 2017 GOP Tax Transfer? Do they think we won’t remember the many, many times that Right Wingers gloated about skyrocketing taxes on the Middle Class and Blue State residents, sneering that maybe they should tell California legislatures to adjust their state finances? Do they think nobody will remember Tucker Carlson gloating happily about pumping up taxes on “urbanites who voted for Hillary”?
The GOP “concern” here is so disingenuous as to frankly be insulting.