A New Threat to Social Security
By
John Dingell,
Detroit
Free Press
July
20, 2007
President George W. Bush has not given up his fight to
privatize Social Security; he is simply doing it much more quietly. If you
don't believe me, consider whom the president has appointed deputy
commissioner of Social Security: Dr. Andrew Biggs, a man who has dedicated
his career to killing one of the federal government's most successful
programs.
Biggs was slipped into this new job with a recess
appointment in April. This was after Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of
the Senate Finance Committee, announced the committee would not take up
the Biggs nomination because "his support for the failed idea of
privatization would reopen a settled debate about the future of Social
Security reform."
I applauded Sen. Baucus' announcement
and breathed a sigh of relief. This most successful program, of which my
father, Congressman John D. Dingell Sr., was a primary architect, would be
safe -- for the time being.
But because of the recess appointment, Biggs can serve
until the end of the 110th Congress without proper confirmation by the
Senate.
"Social Security reform featuring personal
retirement accounts doesn't just send one liberal sacred cow to the
slaughterhouse. It sends the whole herd," Biggs wrote in a 1999 paper
titled "Social Security Reform and the New Deal Paradigm." In
this paper, his thesis is that the dismantling of Social Security would
ideally lead to the dismantling of all or many New Deal-era social welfare
programs.
"Murky accounting. Imminent bankruptcy. These
terms describe today's Social Security much as they do Enron's foggy
finances," Biggs wrote for the conservative Washington Times in 2002.
We all heard about the "covert propaganda"
the Bush administration engaged in when it used taxpayer money to promote
the Medicare drug benefit and paid a conservative commentator to promote
the No Child Left Behind Act. Well, several career employees at the Social
Security administration complained when an edict came out that they were
to use a policy brief that states benefit cuts "would double the
poverty rate of Social Security beneficiaries aged 64-78" and insert
solvency messages in all Social Security publications, as well as spread
the word at nontraditional sites. The policy brief that employs these
scare tactics was written by Biggs -- then in the Social Security
Administration's Office of Retirement Policy.
It also appears Biggs violated the ban on lobbying by
federal employees when he edited the prepared testimony for a lobbyist
appearing before the Democratic Policy Committee.
We must again remind the president that privatization
is not an acceptable alteration to the Social Security program. On
Wednesday, I offered an amendment to the appropriations bill for Labor,
Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies that would
suspend the salary of the deputy commissioner of Social Security until he
is properly confirmed by the Senate. It passed by a vote of 231-199. This
sends a clear message to the president that Congress is watching and will
work to hold the administration accountable.
For more than 60 years, Social Security has provided
retirement, disability and survivors' benefits that have kept generations
of people out of poverty and provided a secure base for middle class
retirement. We need a deputy commissioner who believes in the mission of
Social Security, not an ideologue who wants to dismantle seniors'
retirement security.
U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, is the
longest-serving member of the
U.S.
House.
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