Katie Couric’s Hit Job on Social Security

[Judi Lynn]

August 17, 2015
Katie Couric’s Hit Job on Social Security

by Dave Lindorff

Katie Couric, a veteran TV journalist and currently global anchor for Yahoo News, just trashed Social Security in a hit piece misleadingly called “Explaining Social Security” that purported to be explaining the system’s financial “crisis.” Far from explaining the system, she trundled out tired falsehoods and scare tactics long used by the system’s enemies — notably the Republican Party and including many Democrats in the pocket of Wall Street. (Significantly, the online video was sponsored by a Merrill Lynch/Bank of America, hardly a fan of Social Security.)

First, Couric’s long list of whoppers:

She claims the system works like a bank, collecting workers’ Social Security payroll taxes, and stashing them under a government mattress, and then paying out the money as retirement checks when they take their retirement. This is simply not true and was never meant to be true. What actually happens, and happened from the beginning of the program in1936, is that the payroll taxes collected from current workers and their employers go to pay for the benefits of current retirees.

Couric makes it appear that greedy baby boomers are going to be sucking money out of the pockets of younger active workers to fund their retirements as though this were something new and unseemly, when in fact, retirees since 1936 have been getting their benefits paid by younger people actively in the workforce. That is the actual way the system was designed to work, not, as she suggests, as a enforced retirement savings program.

Then she highlights what she wrongly claims is the problem: that the system has gone out of whack because of the unanticipated burden of some 74 million baby boomers now beginning to retire and collect Social Security benefits, and a relatively diminished number of current workers who have to pay for those benefits.

Couric warns ominously that the $2.8 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund is being diminished to cover the annual shortfall in current payroll tax collections, and says this fund is going to eventually run out. Then she says that the program’s future is “well…not secure.”

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/17/katie-courics-hit-job-on-social-security/

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. The Trouble Is That No One Is Able To Challenge Her On The Spot.

The misinformation stays out there without push back. So many falsehoods stay out in the ether that go unanswered. No matter how bad the lies people believe it.

For me I would get in her face and be nasty about. Forget civility. She is on the side that wants to JUST STOP THE CHECKS without notice. We all know they won't stop until someone just goes after them and makes a scene like what happened to Scott Walker. We have to start being nasty and kicking back. Otherwise the safety net will disappear.

Look at what has happened so far. And look at how vicious the attacks are against Planned Parenthood. They will kill it unless we just step in the way and stop them.

[BlueJazz]

2. From what I've read about Ms Couric is: She's extremely cunning if not overly bright plus she'll...

...take the money and spout her TV lines like any good actor whether she agrees with what she's saying or not...

[closeupready]

17. She lost her news anchor gig on CBS, she lost her talk show ...

She's probably pretty desperate, though she shouldn't be after the tens of millions of $$ she's made in her career.

[YOHABLO]

19. Yeah, that's what I don't understand. They've made all this f..ing money, go travel, see the world

retire. No these egotist still believe that they have fans and an audience so they are driven to continue selling their souls.

[SheilaT]

3. You can tell that not only will she not be dependent on Social Security

for a significant part of her income when she's older, but she does not know ANYONE for whom that's true. Which is an awful lot of those who currently collect or will in the future collect SS.

[shadowmayor]

5. Another corporate reader

One thing that hardly gets mentioned is the fact that Social Security also pays for people in need. Social Security Disability takes our working class funds and delivers money to those who are in trouble or need due to injury or illness. And, the wife of that truck driver who was killed last month with 3 kids at home; they will all receive survivor's benefits - the single largest source of income for children of any federal program.

Churches, kind people, and family members cannot carry this load, so we all get to pitch in. That's why it's a Social program. When my right wing or phony libertarian friends and acquaintances tell me that social security should be privatized, I always ask them "who will take care of the survivors dependent on those funds?" Crickets on that one every time. IF they say that churches will pitch in, I remind them that in the good ol' days, America was populated with poor houses, places that were not the envy of every town.

What the hell is wrong with our country when we refuse to praise what is an amazing program, successful to the extent that it has paid for itself every year, and is for too many the only source of income when we retire? Can you just imagine millions of retirees listening to some baby with a cell phone on a TV commercial telling them to get busy with their portfolio? Ask all those folks who jumped on the Enron bandwagon how that one worked out for them?

Social Security was so flush with money after Reagan jacked up the FICA rate, that he went on a massive spending spree. It would have been much worse if the Democrats in Congress hadn't reined some of it in. Daddy Bush had to raise taxes despite his pledge not to, as our debt was skyrocketing. One solution to this problem, borrow money from social security to pay down just the interest on this debt. Under Clinton, hundreds of billions were borrowed each year just to keep the debt from exploding by paying our interest due. Much like Americans who can't pay down their credit card bills, but do somehow manage to cover the interest payments due to keep the whole thing from collapsing. So in a sense, Social Security was also applied to a country in need, a country disabled by voodoo economics run wild.

May Couric's toes find sharp corners in the dark the rest of her mendacious days!

The Shadow Mayor

[StarzGuy]

9. Unfortunately, I am one of those disabled Americans...

...who became disabled 5 years ago after working for 35 years as an educator. I depend on my SSDI payments as the bulk of my income. I do have a small federal pension. Now, unless congress acts they are telling us to expect a 19-20% cut in disability payments next year. If that happens I will be on the street with no where to go. I guess I should start checking out the best overpass to set up living arrangements under it. The sadness that this causes me along with the stress is making my disabilities even worse.

Good luck America...I guess it's just about time I checked out.

[DesertFlower]

10. i became disabled at age 48. after fighting for

almost 2 years i got it retroactively. had to get a lawyer and go before an ALJ first. when i reached age 65 and 8 months it became regular social security.

when my husband passed over 3 years ago i got survivors benefits. mind you i didn't get my benefits plus his -- my payment went up to reflect what he would have gotten at age 64.

i think it's a fair system.

[kacekwl]

12. Hang in there Guy,

There is nothing these aholes would like more if folks like you would just check out. Stay Strong if you can change is coming if we keep fighting.

[Recursion]

16. But unlike SS, SSDI and SSI do actually face actuarial problems

Particularly SSI.

[YOHABLO]

20. Right, the problem is that millionaires only pay FICA tax on their first $118,500.

Also if we had a single payer health care system Medicare, which takes up a huge portion of expenditures out of SSI, would be solvent. Medicare for all > with adjustments for eye care, and dental care.

[Recursion]

21. Well, your Medicare claim is much less clear

Nobody's every really put forward a plan to pay for Medicare for everybody so it's not clear what would happen. If everybody has to be on Medicare Parts A & B, and nobody under 65 gets subsidies from the Trust Fund, that's about $900 per month per person that people would need to pay in premiums. That's clearly a non-starter (at least to me), so the question becomes what the revenue source(s) for the expanded Medicare would be. Without answering that we can't really say what effect "expanding Medicare to everyone" would have, because answering the funding question is the way you define what "expanding Medicare to everyone" really means.

[hedda_foil]

6. Disgusting.

I suppose the fact that we've paid double since the Reagan administration for the hell of it. Not that Couric would have noticed, since she contributes what, to her, is a pittance, given her multimillion dollar paychecks.

[Hoyt]

7. Fact is, something has to be done with SS. Increase the cap, impose tax on capital gains, or wait

until Republicans control Congress and Presidency and see what happens. The latter may well be what happens.

We should have done something early in Obama's Presidency. Unfortunately, too many people wanted to deny any problem other than increasing benefits.

[TBF]

14. Should have been a lock box from the get-go

but increasing the cap is the best thing we can do now (should be increased to full income - why give the billionaires yet another break?)

I would also go back to pre-Reagan with capital gains - no reason people should not be paying tax on full income - all of it. This isn't going to hurt grandma & grandpa in Peoria. This will be another way to fairly tax (should never have been cut in the first place).

That should do it, but if not taxes on trades are another area for revenue.

[world wide wally]

8. SS is the easiest fix of all the problems we face. Just raise the cap and be done with it.

[DesertFlower]

11. i agree. there's no cap on medicare. let the rich

pay more into ss.

[Bill USA]

13. Let's just say it, Couric is an ignorant jerk.

[awoke_in_2003]

15. Famous for her legs, not her reporting skills. nt

[closeupready]

18. She was a famous shoe model, initially.

[CTyankee]

22. My husband and I have not watched any of the network morning shows since

Jane Pauley got canned and replaced by a more glamorous woman. Jane was and is a professional. She married Garry Trudeau and they have a house on one of the little Thimble Islands in CT. I wish we could see more of wonderful Jane!