Monica Lewinsky saved Social Security during the Clinton years. Who will save it now?

[Karmadillo]

http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/06/18/the-stealth-attack-on-america%e2%80%99s-best-loved-program-12715/

The Stealth Attack on America’s Best-Loved Program
Friday, 06/18/2010 - 9:00 am by Robert Kuttner | 7 Comments

As Obama’s Fiscal Commission prepares for its June 30 hearing, New Deal 2.0 invited leading thinkers to participate in our Social Security’s Fiscal Fitness series, which examines the soundness of the program, its relationship to the federal deficit, and the vital role it plays in America’s economic future.

Washington bipartisan elites have been working to weaken Social Security since the mid-Clinton Administration. Clinton, prodded by his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, was on the verge of cutting a deal with Newt Gingrich to partially privatize America’s most successful retirement program.

The intermediary was Clinton’s White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles. The same Bowles is now the co-chair of Obama’s fiscal commission — which also has designs on Social Security. Corporate Democrats keep turning up, like bad pennies.

As I reported in my 2007 book, The Squandering of America, liberals can thank Monica Lewinsky for saving Social Security from that earlier bipartisan deal. Why? Because when the frisky Clinton was being impeached, and Congressional liberals were holding their noses and reluctantly saving him from ouster, they were in no mood to have him trash Social Security. New details have been reported in the recent book, The Pact, by Steven Gillon, about Clinton’s dealings with Gingrich.

But what is it with Democrats like Bowles, Rubin, and Rubin’s protégé Peter Orszag, now director of the Office of Management and Budget and another of the deficit hawks who would weaken Social Security in order to cut the deficit? Don’t they get that Social Security, along with Medicare, is one of the Democrats’ crown jewels? Don’t they appreciate that two-thirds of elderly Americans depend on Social Security for at least half their income?

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[Gaedel]

1. Only Nixon could go to China.... nt

[Scuba]

2. America owes Monica a big hug!

[Froward69]

5. yes, but NO kiss.

we know where her mouth has been... :rofl:

[Enthusiast]

3. Alan Simpson will save it

if you would only listen to him. What is wrong with you?

[n2doc]

4. The rich don't depend on SS

And that is all that matters in modern America. If the rich can't make money off of it, it must go!