George Will Continues to Call Social Security ‘A Welfare State That Exists to Transfer Wealth to the Elderly’
Click here to view this media I know Susie already wrote about this segment on This Week, but I thought George Will’s comments here deserved some attention of their own. It seems some things never change, like Will calling our social safety nets welfare as he did back in 2007 on this same show, which Nicole wrote about here — George Will Wants Those Lazy Seniors Off The Dole . He also repeated that same talking point for an article he wrote for the Cato Institute back in 2008 where along with repeating that same talking point, Will also derided Americans for not saving enough on their own and for running up their credit cards so that they would end up being dependent on programs like Social Security in the first place rather than having some money in the bank. You know George, all of those terrible, welfare loving seniors might have been able to put more into their savings accounts and would not have needed to run up their credit cards if it weren’t for the “conservative” economic policies someone’s actually been paying you to push for the last god knows how many years with those wingnut welfare checks you receive every week for writing your columns and writing pieces like the one in ’08 for Cato. Or if heaven forbid there had been some tighter regulations on the banks where they weren’t encouraging the type of easy access to credit with interest rates that used to make loan sharks blush, maybe more Americans would not have been allowed to be irresponsible with their spending habits in the first place. But then, we all know what Republicans think about regulation and any nasty government interference with those “free markets.” This is the same man who called the benefits union members in the auto industry received “welfare” as well. I’ve got to wonder how many seniors, no matter what their political leanings, would appreciate Will calling their Social Security benefits welfare. Now that Republicans have decided that doubling down on defending Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare is a good idea, maybe we can get them to adopt Will’s talking point on Social Security as well, since they apparently believe that destroying our social safety nets is a winner for them during the next election. AMANPOUR: So I know you’re considering Pawlenty as a real viable candidate. Do you think, though, that’s a bit fanciful? I mean, a lot of economists have said that 5 percent today is — I mean, it’s great, it would be great, but not really possible. WILL: A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, and that certainly does. Steady 5 percent growth probably won’t happen. Also, his pledge to get federal spending down to 18 percent of GDP is very hard to do with an aging population and a welfare state that exists to transfer wealth to the elderly. That said, he’s avoiding the austerity trap. He’s avoiding the green eyeshade, root canal kind of politics that Ronald Reagan avoided. Reagan said we’re going to get out of this mess with growth. At this point, by the way, in the Reagan recovery, after ’81-’82, the economy was growing at 7 percent.
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on June 13, 2011. Filed under