Now They're Coming After Your Social Security

Wall Street's TARP Gang Rides Again
By DEAN BAKER

Just over two years ago, the Wall Streeters were running around Congress and the media saying that if they didn't immediately get $700 billion the world would end. Since they own large chunks of both, they quickly got their money.

Even more important than the hundreds of billions of loans issued through the TARP was the trillions of dollars of loans and guarantees from the Fed and the FDIC. This money came with virtually no strings attached. It kept Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America and many others from collapsing. As a result, folks like Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein are again pocketing tens of millions a year in wages and bonuses, instead of walking the unemployment lines. Instead, 15 million ordinary workers are being told to just get used to being unemployed; it's the "new normal."

But wait, it gets worse. The thing about Wall Streeters is that no matter how much money you give them, they always want more. Now they are using their political power and control over the media to attack Social Security.

This effort is being led by billionaire investment banker Peter Peterson. Mr. Peterson has personally profited to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from the "fund managers' tax subsidy," an obscure provision of the tax code that allows billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than schoolteachers and firefighters. However, Peterson believes in giving back. He has committed $1 billion to an effort that is intended to take away the Social Security benefits that people have worked and paid for.

As part of this effort, Peterson set up a whole new foundation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. He and/or his foundation created a "news service," The Fiscal Times, which is intended to promote the view that we have no choice but to cut Social Security. The Fiscal Times has entered into agreements with the Washington Post and other credible newspapers to provide material.

Peterson is also funding the creation of a high school curriculum that is intended to tell our children that in the future the country will be too poor to finance Social Security. He funded a silly exercise called "America Speaks," which was supposed to convince an assembly of selected participants that we must cut Social Security after a day-long immersion in Peterson-style propaganda. (The people didn't buy it.) And now his crew is spending $20 million on an ad campaign to convince people the world will end if we don't cut Social Security.

Attacks on Social Security have been fended off in the past, and it is possible that this one will be too. It is an incredibly popular and successful program. It does exactly what it was supposed to do. It provides a modest income to the retired and disabled, and their families, to ensure that people who have spent their lives working will not fall into poverty. It is also extremely efficient, with administrative costs that are less than 1/20th as large as the costs of private insurers.

It also has very little fraud. We know this because earlier this year the Washington Post made a big point of hyping mistaken payments to federal employees than involved less than 0.01 percent of Social Security spending. If substantial fraud did exist, the Washington Post wouldn't have to hype small change to try to discredit the program.

The really incredible part of this story is that we should be talking about increasing Social Security benefits. Benefits are quite low by international standards. The portion of wage income replaced by Social Security is considerably lower than the retirement benefit provided by the systems in Australia, Canada, Germany and most other wealthy countries.

As a result, many of the retirees who are dependent almost entirely on Social Security have incomes that are only slightly above the poverty line. A modest increase in benefits could make a big difference in these people's standard of living.

In addition, the near retirees, the people directly in the gun sights of the Wall Street TARPers, have just seen most of their wealth destroyed by the collapse of the housing bubble. The Wall Streeters now want to kick them yet again, by taking away Social Security benefits that they have already paid for.

If Congress and the media worked for the public, we would be debating Wall Street speculation taxes right now. Insofar as we need to do something about the deficit in the longer term, taxing Wall Street speculation is a far more economically desirable route than taking away the Social Security benefits that ordinary workers have already paid for. We could easily raise more than $1.5 trillion over the next decade with a broadly based financial speculation tax than would have almost no impact on anyone except the Wall Street crew.

Even the IMF is now pushing higher taxes on the Wall Street types, recognizing the enormous waste and rents in the financial sector. But the media and Congress do not respond to economic reality, they respond to money. And Peter Peterson and the Wall Street crew are not paying for an honest discussion of the country's fiscal and economic problems. They are financing a rigged debate that is intended to result in even more money flowing to Wall Street and less to those who work for a living.