While Whacking Critics, Obama Gets Facts Wrong

[laughingliberal]

WASHINGTON -- While arguing at Tuesday's press conference that his progressive critics are being sanctimonious and overly pure, President Obama flatly misstated the history of the Social Security program and disregarded the central intent of the public health insurance option.

Both concerns were raised Wednesday by economics blogger and former Clinton Treasury official Brad DeLong. <snip>

<snip> As it happens, Obama said the same thing in October, in an interview with Comedy Central's Jon Stewart: "When Social Security was passed, it applied to widows and orphans and it was a very restricted program, and over time that structure that was built ended up developing into the most important social safety net that we have in our country." That did not go unnoticed in the blogosphere, either.

Obama's overall point -- that Social Security wasn't born fully grown -- was exactly right. But his facts were exactly wrong. The Social Security Act, as first signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, paid retirement benefits to the primary worker -- and not to their widows and orphans. It wasn't until a 1939 change that the law added benefits for survivors and for the retiree's spouse and children.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/while-whacking-left-obama_n_794061.html

I remember some of us posting about this being false the last time he said it. Does he not know the truth or does he thing we don't know

[Cleita]

1. Yes, I noticed that he had his facts wrong with both

Social Security and Medicare history. It's troubling because peddling half truths are so Republican in nature.

[Catherina]

2. When you consider that Reagan is his hero, you can pretty much figure out

where his facts are coming from.

[laughingliberal]

4. +1 nt

[glinda]

3. Subscribing to the new Murdoch textbooks perhaps.

[BzaDem]

5. I think his main point is that plenty of liberals wanted to kill SS because it wasn't "good enough."

In the long run, these liberals of the 30s became irrelevant.

Looks like he would have been correct if he said "didn't cover widows and orphans," but even that supports his main point.

[dreamnightwind]

6. Perhaps, but

that was a very different world back then. Washington wasn't wholly owned by the corporate beasts-of-no-nation. They told us NAFTA and the GATT were imperfect but necessary starting points that would of course be tweaked to provide for good labor standards. Still waiting.

I have no illusion that the mechanisms that used to allow legislation to be improved are still functional. Now it's all about corporate lobbying interests constantly eroding any good that was permitted to get into legislation in the first place.

Make it worthwhile in the first place or don't vote for it.

[TheKentuckian]

8. Not good enough and not good are two different things.

Obama is a bullshit artist, selling a net negative structure on positive features.

The engine is blown but that car has a hell of a paint job!

[Laelth]

12. Oh, well said!

"Selling a net negative structure on its positive features."

Absolutely! That's exactly how Obama handles (and tried to sell) the health insurance company enrichment act.

-Laelth

[bigtree]

7. it was very exclusionary at its inception - the President's basic premise was correct

from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_%28United_States%29


____ Most women and minorities were excluded from its benefits of unemployment insurance and old age pensions. Employment definitions reflected typical white male categories and patterns.

Job categories that were not covered by the act included workers in agricultural labor, domestic service, government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers. The act also denied coverage to individuals who worked intermittently.

These jobs were dominated by women and minorities. For example, women made up 90% of domestic labor in 1940 and two-thirds of all employed black women were in domestic service. Exclusions exempted nearly half the working population.

Nearly two-thirds of all African Americans in the labor force, 70 to 80% in some areas in the South, and just over half of all women employed were not covered by Social Security. At the time, the NAACP protested the Social Security Act, describing it as “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”

[BlueIris]

9. Misstatements like that make me cringe.

Cause it's not that hard to get the facts straight. Does Google not work in the Oval Office?

[Skittles]

10. sounds like he's getting his "facts" from repukes

[Supersedeas]

16. as long as he keeps pushing their policies, the faux facts will keep coming

[Laelth]

11. k&r for the truth. Sad that we need to correct the President's facts. n/t

-Laelth

[Starry Messenger]

13. recommend.

[donco6]

14. He made it clear that he wants it pulled way back.

It's his own dog-whistle to the RW who constantly claims social programs make people lazy.

[Unvanguard]

15. Obama's technically wrong, but he's substantially right.

The origins of the US welfare state long predate Social Security; it was Civil War pensions, and they did initially focus on widows and orphans.

[MisterP]

17. the center is closer to the right wing than the left wing is? NO! that contradicts everything the

(remaining) Loyalists and Blue Dogs tell me about the political system and the Way The World Really Works

K 'n' R