Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has the temerity to ask Wisconsin voters to re-elect him after calling Capitol rioters “tourists,” has come up with another bold idea. (He’s nothing if not imaginative.)
“There are a number of innovative ideas I would support,” he told constituents during a tele-town hall. Referring to ex-Sen. Phil Gramm, a principal architect of the 2007-2008 financial crisis (details here), Johnson said “we were talking about our labor shortage, and one of his suggestions was to coax seniors” to re-enter the labor force. (See story here.)
At least Johnson knows where to go for bad ideas.
To put this in context, several weeks ago Johnson floated a proposal to make Social Security and Medicare part of the discretionary federal budget, instead of mandatory entitlements, which means they’d have to be renewed — and could be defunded — every time Congress considers the federal budget. As a way to “rein in the national debt.” (See story here.)
Three points to make here:
- Social Security and Medicare are fully funded by FICA taxes, so don’t contribute to deficits or add to the debt;
- Using Social Security and Medicare taxes to help reduce deficits or debt would be like robbing people of their savings accounts;
- Johnson is a multimillionaire who will never need Social Security or Medicare for his basic needs (and obviously doesn’t care about people who do).
This crackpot scheme probably isn’t going anywhere, at least not in the near future, but why send a crackpot to the U.S. Senate when you can elect someone who’s vastly more rational than he is? Wisconsin voters will have the opportunity this November.
This is part of a broader problem in today’s politics, i.e., it’s getting harder to find Republican candidates who aren’t crackpots, but I digress.
The offshoring of manufacturing jobs, the fall of organized labor, disappearance of lifetime employment, and end of private pensions in the decades following the Reagan Revolution have dramatically increased economic insecurity for American workers and retirees alike. As of 2022 a majority, 57%, of senior citizens depend on Social Security as a major source of income, and 40% as their only source of income (see story here).
That’s not something they chose, it’s a reality the average American has to live with, a result of decades of stagnant wages and a soaring cost of living. People struggling to put food on the table are in no position to sock away six-figure sums for retirement.
Social Security, part of FDR’s depression-era New Deal, has been described as “the most successful government program in history.” It virtually eliminated old-age poverty in America. (See story here.) But conservatives have always hated it, and hatch one scheme after another to destroy it (e.g., ex-Speaker Paul Ryan’s attempt to privatize it, see story here, which had Wall Street sharks licking their choppers). Voters learned long ago never to trust Republicans on Social Security.
Johnson is less clever than most of them, so his scheme puts the GOP’s plan for seniors upfront and in the open: Go back to work. The problem, of course, is that everyone reaches an age when they can’t work anymore because of health, physical limitations, and other reasons.
It’s good that mandatory retirement age has been abolished. My father was pushed out of the workforce on his 65th birthday, a common experience for his generation. People should be able to keep working as long as they’re able and want to. But the idea of forcing people to work until they drop dead is a 19th century idea.
Which pretty much describes most Republican ideas. President Biden, in his “Soul of the Nation” speech on Sept. 1, 2020, accused the GOP of wanting to take America “backward.” This may not have been precisely what he was referring to. But it’s certainly part of what differentiates Republicans from Democrats.
As I recall, there’s a line in the movie “Hoosiers,” which is set in 1950s Indiana, in which a student recites that “progress is indoor plumbing.” It’s also Social Security, Medicare, and other features of the American safety net. Capitalism is the most productive economic system ever devised, and has its place in our overall system, but it’s not the entire solution to all our needs as conservatives believe.
Also, it’s not like Johnson and other conservatives are champions of liveable wages (see article here). In the 1950s, about 60% of America’s economic output went to labor and 40% to capital; after 40 years of Reaganism and conservative economics, it’s the reverse; now, about 60% goes to capital and 40% to labor, although that’s beginning to trend in the other direction because a declining birth rate (who can afford to raise children?) and Republicans’ restrictive immigration policies have created a labor shortage.
It has gaps and lets some people fall through the cracks. A basic role of any government is taking care of its people. That’s where programs like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, injured workers compensation, and disability benefits come in. Republicans, historically, have been against all those things, or have tried to chip away at them whenever they could. Their view of the economy is an 18th-century workshop one, as portrayed in Charles Dickens’ novels.
If that’s what you want, vote for them. If you’d rather live in the 21st century, don’t, especially if you live in Wisconsin and are voting a ballot with Ron Johnson for U.S. Senate on it.