Back to Basics

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is an intelligent, insightful man.  An example of that came recently when he was asked why he won’t hire clerks who have substantive philosophical disagreements with him:  “It’s like trying to train a pig. It wastes your time, and it aggravates the pig.”

Try as I may, I have considerable difficulty applying Justice Thomas’s sage observation to my daily life.  A reminder came earlier this week.

We were having dinner with a very good friend who I’ve known for over 40 years.  She is a traditional JFK Democrat who hasn’t noticed her party’s since changed just a little bit.  The conversation went along well until the subject turned to Social Security.  It’s a rip-off because, she asserted, no one has ever gotten out of the system what they paid into it.

I noted that the very first Social Security recipient put in less than $25 and ended up receiving more than $25,000 in government checks.  My point was such a system was obviously actuarially unsound from the very beginning and thus unsustainable.  My friend looked at me skeptically.  Since I’m used to getting looks like that, I went on.

A person earning average wages who retired in 1980 at 65 received their contributions (a misleading term since there’s nothing voluntary about it) as well as their employer’s contributions back in Social Security checks in 2.8 years.  She had a ready response: “I don’t believe it.”

What do you do when seemingly rational, bright persons choose not to believe documented facts because it conflicts with what they “know”?  The late Congressman Larry McDonald (D-GA) once told me how he handled similar situations.  If a person walks up to you claiming he just saw a purple elephant, he said, don’t bother trying to persuade him there aren’t purple elephants.  There’s nothing you can say that’ll convince them otherwise.  They are just too detached from reality to devote any time to.

I have another friend, this one a high school classmate with whom I reconnected via social media.  We’ve had several exchanges involving politics and the most recent one is fairly typical.  I’d pointed out that a left wing congressman she’s expressed admiration for has received 100 percent favorable ratings from the National Abortion Rights Action League, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, and the National Organization for Women.

Her carefully crafted response begins; “Ok, let me get this straight, you’re against rights for gays, African Americans and WOMEN! Typical Republican. I hope you’re independently wealthy as you’ll do well with your Party.”

Where do you even begin with something like that?  Merely citing her hero’s popularity with an assortment of special-interest groups makes me the bigot.  I’m certain this woman knows virtually nothing about these outfits, other than their innocuous sounding names.  They are mostly liberal pressure groups advocating bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive government.

NOW, for example, has about as much to do with women’s rights as I do with classical music appreciation.  Last month, it passed a resolution urging the age to receive full Social Security benefits be lowered.  This comes at a time when even leftists have shown a modicum of concern over exploding entitlements.

Talk about grim tidings on the debt ceiling. According to the Washington Post: “Yesterday a worried Treasury Secretary . . . sent a letter to (the) House Speaker . . . listing the consequences if the debt bill was not sent to the President immediately. Social Security checks totaling $8 billion already in the mail would not be cashed and other checks for civil service retirement, veterans payments and government operating costs would not be honored as of today, he said.”

That ominous news isn’t from today, but from April 3, 1979. The Treasury Secretary was Carter appointee Werner Michael Blumenthal and the House Speaker was Thomas “Tip” O’Neill. The struggle at the time was whether to raise the temporary debt ceiling to a then astounding $830 billion. The current contest is over raising it to $16.7 trillion, or more than 20 times what it was only 32 years ago.

Barack H. (as in hissy) Obama was using the old Democratic playbook on fear-mongering when he told CBS News he can’t guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3. It was a strategy favored by Democrat Jimmy Carter, whose own failed presidency is looking better every day when compared to the ongoing disaster that is Obama.

Five months after Blumenthal’s threat, Carter’s next treasury secretary showed up asking Congress to work on that debt ceiling again. The Washington Post reported he told the House Ways & Means Committee:

“The Treasury was required to suspend the sale of United States savings bonds, and people who depend upon Social Security checks and other government payments suddenly realized that the Treasury simply cannot pay the government’s bills unless it is authorized to borrow the funds needed to finance the spending programs previously enacted by Congress.”

As long as “people who depend upon Social Security checks and other government payments” got the message, liberals could count on Congress – in the face of a potential voter backlash – to keep to its big spending, big taxing ways. Democrats knew a winning strategy when they saw one.

In May, 1980, it was time to remind folks of what would happen if Congress wouldn’t raise the debt ceiling again. The Washington Post was there with a story on it:

“The debt ceiling expires Sunday. Although Congress has gone through similar exercises before without the government grinding to a halt, House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill. Jr. (D-Mass.) warned that banks could stop cashing Social Security checks next week if Congress does not extend the ceiling to continue the government’s borrowing authority in the meantime.”

Fifteen years later, another Democrat was in the White House. Bill Clinton was stupid enough to give phone sex a bad name, but he knew when it was time to start frightening seniors. An article in the July 25, 1995 Washington Post noted:

“Last week, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin wrote (House Speaker Newt) Gingrich that a debt ceiling crisis could interrupt government operations, delay payments to Social Security beneficiaries, disrupt Treasury’s borrowing operations and ‘generate uncertainty in the domestic and international securities markets.’”

We’ve been through all this before. Today’s liberals just aren’t much on originality.