Barrett: Obama picks failed government over Wall Street 'whims'

Social Security is collapsing. Both sides of the political aisle admit that - mainly when nobody's looking.

As of this year, the program is spending more than it is raising in payroll revenue. In two or three decades, with retiring boomers having staked their claims by the multitudes, it will burn through its final reserves and cease to be able to pay the elderly the money that quite a few of them are depending on for petty luxuries such as, oh, food. Beyond that time frame, there is no rational basis on which to expect much return on your "investment" in Social Security.

In contrast, the stock market historically trends upward, despite downturns from time to time. You actually have cause to believe - without resorting to wishes upon stars - that you will get a reasonable return when you buy stock.

So you have to take it with a 12-pack of heavily iodized Morton's when President Obama suggests that it is Wall Street - not crooked or incompetent government - that's really on trial here. Republican plans to make Social Security solvent amount to "tying your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders and the ups and downs of the stock market ...," he said in a radio address. "I'll fight with everything I've got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street."

His alternative? Forcing you to gamble on the whims of a Congress and a president who have no incentive to rescue Social Security because they will be out of office long before it is reduced to rubble. If that is not reason enough to doubt their resolve to lure the program off the merry path to disintegration, try to find any evidence that they have a workable plan to do so. You'll search in vain.

If I had a choice - the one thing Mr. President most eagerly wishes to deny us - I would invest my full retirement in the stock market in a second before I would rely on a social welfare program run so badly that it makes shares in Braniff look promising.

Propaganda taxes

Money is being withheld from your paycheck to air commercials nationwide that tell people how delightful ObamaCare is.

You are also paying taxes to tell yourself, through thousands of road signs around the country, that the stimulus is wonderfully effective.

And you are paying for federally funded studies at multiple universities to find out what the public thinks of the stimulus.

Let me save those good folks in academia the trouble: We hate the stimulus. Really. Check every opinion poll from CNN to Gallup. We feel equal parts abhorrence and resentment toward this debt-plumping boondoggle, and we're beyond weary of watching it prop up or radically expand government employment at a time when government needs to be slashed without mercy.

But even more than we despise the stimulus and ObamaCare, we despise the notion of having to fund propaganda that tells us things we know to be false. It's unseemly to ask us to pay for shovels to dig our own economic graves - and for ads telling us how much happier we'll be six feet under.

ObamaCare: 'Pull it out by the roots'

Nothing should be more obvious to Republicans than that ObamaCare ought to command their tender-loving attention first thing if they regain congressional majorities in the November elections.

It's calamitously expensive, intentionally bureaucratic, unconstitutionally dictatorial and exquisitely unpopular. In a recent Rasmussen poll, much as in previous polls, 59 percent of all voters surveyed said it should be repealed; only 38 percent said it should stay on the books. (Shouldn't some Lemon Law kick in at 59 percent?)

In short, it's not only good economics to get rid of it - or at least to try to do so - it's what people want.

Speaking with National Review Online, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, used an appropriately vigorous metaphor: "We need to pull it out by the roots."

Any Republican member of Congress who lacks the gumption to attempt that next year is remarkably out of touch.

To reach Steve Barrett, call 423-757-6329 or e-mail sbarrett@timesfreepress.com.

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