PRESS RELEASE
Social Security Trustee Blasts
Obama Attack on Funding
Dec. 9, 2011 (EIRNS)—President Obama's ongoing campaign to destroy Social Security under the fraudulent banner of "payroll tax reduction" was exposed and denounced by a Republican "Public Trustee" for Social Security and Medicare. Chuck Blahous, who served as President George W. Bush's deputy director of the National Economic Council, and is now at the Hoover Institute, issued a statement Dec. 8, saying that
"Social Security was not established to be a source of 'temporary' stimulus funds. The idea that its payroll tax rate should be moved up and down with economic events is highly dangerous to the program's financial future."
Blahous referred to President Franklin Roosevelt's original intention in keeping the Social Security fund separate from the general tax fund:
"When you start funding Social Security that way, you basically destroy any notion that people really paid for their Social Security benefits. Once we destroy that, we're going to destroy a lot of the political protections that Social Security has long enjoyed. Social Security will gradually be turned into something more akin to welfare, for which the funding is provided not solely by ... workers but also by a subsidy funded by those subject to income tax."
He then warned:
"We've got this political dynamic that says, 'Well, if you don't extend this [the Social Security tax cut being pushed by Obama], then you're in favor of raising taxes on poor working people. If that's the dynamic, then Social Security is in really severe trouble."
