The Senate Finance Committee is holding a hearing today on the re-nominations of Charles Blahous and Robert Reischauer to stay on as public trustees of the Social Security Trust Funds.
Michael Hiltzik has written a column in opposition to the Blahous nomination on the grounds that Blahous has been consistently hostile to Social Security throughout his public life. Blahous thinks benefits are too high, he opposed extending the Disability Trust Fund, he was a major figure in former President George W. Bush's campaign to partially privatize Social Security, he constantly warns that the Trust Funds are running out of money but opposes any plan for them other than wholesale benefits cut as soon as possible, etc.
I would agree with Hiltzik's opposition to the Blahous re-nomination except for the facts that the public trustees have no power and Blahous' efforts over the years, maybe decades, to undermine Social Security have been worse than useless. Support for Social Security has never been stronger. If anything former President George W. Bush's politically disastrous plan to partially privatize Social Security which Blahous promoted, helped demonstrate just how popular Social Security is.
So go ahead, keep Blahous as a public trustee. He can't do any harm. As far as I'm concerned, he can use whatever podium you can get to spout his fear-mongering. Nobody cares what he thinks other than some of his fellow Republicans and probably not even a majority of them. Even Republican officeholders who agree with him are terrified of actually following through on his ideas.
7 comments:
I don't know - one of Hiltzik's points is that when Blahous spouts his BS, the fact that he's a trustee gives his views some legitimacy with the general public. Ask anyone under 40 and they'll say that they don't plan on counting on SS to be there for them when they retire because it's "going broke." So cuts like extending the retirement age begin to make sense for these people. But ask this same person if they knew that FICA is capped at $118,500 of income or that there is no FICA on investment income and they would probably be surprised. So the obvious "fix" to the system (raising the cap), is not known as an option to the public because of people like Blahous who is given a platform for his damaging views.
He has had a pernicious influence on the text of the Trustees Report in describing the TF finances and affect on current federal budgets.
I am surprised Obama renominated Blahous.
Why keep the fox as the guard at the henhouse? Blowhouse has only visions of killing SS and disability and no ideas of keeping it solvent! If Obama cared about SS and disability, he would have taken steps to keep it healthy and solvent instead of letting it rot on the vine!
9:16 is spot on. When someone whose job is to be a trustee of the program has and uses that platform to try and dismantle the system he's a trustee of, you have to ask why do we let this continue. Why give this viewpoint any sort of "official" political legitimacy and any sort of influence on the goings on at the agency? Trustees have power, it may not be prominent but they get a lot of deference at SSA and are treated with kid gloves. I'm sure we could substitute Trump for Blauhaus and see if we are so blase about what he can and cannot do.
Gives the term "untrustworthy" a new meaning!
The two public trustees may not be from the same political party. So traditionally, the President appoints his choice for public trustee from his own party and, as a courtesy, forwards the nomination from the "opposition" as suggested by that party's Congressional leaders. So it's not really appropriate to call Blahous an Obama nominee.
What I find a little more worrisome is that Reischauer seems to be focusing on Medicare (on which he's genuinely expert) and tacitly leaving Social Security to Blahous. That has done real harm, as evidenced, for example, by dropping replacement rates from the trustees' report. The neutral Technical Panel disagreed with that decision and recommended that replacement rates be restored to the report; see http://ssab.gov/Details-Page/ArticleID/656/2015-Technical-Panel-on-Assumptions-and-Methods-A-Report-to-the-Board-September-2015.
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