John Sidney McCain is dangerous and destructive for regular Americans, except for the wealthy few like himself. If elected president, McSame would destroy Social Security.

 

This Herbert Hoover of the 21st century would return this country to the terrible economically unjust era of the Great Depression with its few wealthy haves and have mores and the rest of us.

 

No Social Security, no Medicare, taxing employees for their employer based health care coverage; no women's reproductive rights; overturning Roe v. Wade; no regulations to protect the majority of Americans; more wars; drillling for oil anywhere oil companies want; no regulations to protect ecology and the environment;  but plenty of tax cuts for the rich; that would be the McCain-Palin agenda. 

 

Tula Connell at AFL-CIO blog writes: "This past weekend, we saw Hurricane Ike spread destruction along the Gulf Coast and we witnessed the devastation along Wall Street in the wake of financial greed helped along by the bank deregulation legislation of Sen. John McCain's economic adviser Phil Gramm (the same Gramm who said the nation is a bunch of whiners for complaining about the U.S. economic crisis).

"As Harold Pollack, associate professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, writes on Huffington Post today, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the fire-sale takeover of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America ”along with last week's government bailout of private mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” provide a good time to reflect on the fiscal soundness of the nation's Social Security system.

"And a good time to see how McCain's policies would destroy the nation's most successful social safety net. Because while Sen. Barack Obama would strengthen Social Security, McCain wants to throw it to the private sector ”where our retirement funds could easily be gambled away in a volatile stock market such as the one we've seen in recent months.

"Writes Pollack:

Whatever you may hear, the system is in remarkably good shape these days, even as everything else in the economy seems headed to hell in a hand basket.

Social Security actuaries note that unfunded Social Security liabilities over the next 75 years amount to about 0.6 percent of GDP. Making the Bush tax cuts permanent digs a budget hole three times as large.

"And making tax cuts permanent is exactly what McCain said he would do if elected. Pollack continues:

McCain says it's a "disgrace" that younger people subsidize the retirement of preceding generations. The real disgrace is the utter mismatch between McCain's rhetoric and his own tax plan.

McCain's rhetoric is a stalking horse for private accounts. Many libertarians and conservatives want to replace the current Social Security system with one modeled on corporate 401(k) plans, with an ancillary welfare program tacked on.

Never mind the findings of nonpartisan experts that his tax plan leaves the great, great majority of American households worse off than the Obama plan does. Never mind the growing pile of newspaper stories noting that McCain's been repeatedly lying about this simple fact.

If McCain is worried about the future, what on earth is he doing suggesting a tax plan that accumulates such huge deficits? By 2018, his tax plan adds more than$200 billion more than the Obama plan does to the federal deficit, every year. Given the difference in tax plans, Senator Obama could wage another Iraq war and cover about 90 percent of the projected Social Security shortfall while still running a lower deficit than Senator McCain would.

"As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said today:

The events of the weekend should make clear the desperate need for a President who understands the nature of the economic crisis facing our country and has a concrete plan for rebuilding our economy that is founded on good jobs rather than financial bubbles. Again today, Sen. John McCain repeated that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong," a statement he and President Bush have made regularly over the past nine months, as conditions deteriorated. As president, Sen. Barack Obama will lead the fundamental economic changes we so urgently need. 

"Our retirement security could depend upon who's elected president this November. Take a look at the positions of McCain and Obama on Social Security and retirement."