Lies and Word Games

Politicians lie and play word games. They do so because it pays in politics. Last year’s holiday budget compromise included a one-time reduction in the cash flows going into the Social Security program. This came in the form of reducing FICA taxes on workers (not businesses). Social Security was already an actuarial nightmare and the policy advanced the timer on a ticking time bomb.
Naturally, no elected official told working voters that the reduction in their Social Security contributions would make the entire system they are counting on several years from now to go bankrupt faster.

Let’s fast forward 12 months. Again Washington politicians on both sides of the aisle have been pounding the table telling voters how important a second extension of the one-time payroll tax reduction is. As the process has unraveled, Democrats have even claimed the Tea Parties (Taxed Enough Already) want taxes to go up. For their part, Republicans tried unsuccessfully to tie the one-time extension to ending the three year delay of the Keystone Pipeline permit which would create more than 100,000 jobs.

New Mexico Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, who oppose the pipeline project, both lamented the fact that the Senate’s version of the one-time extension was only for 60 days. Then both Senators voted for it. President Obama called the Senate's action “inexcusable.” Yesterday, Senate candidate and NM House member Martin Heinrich blamed the process that will simply return Social Security contributions to the same levels they have been at for decades, on the Tea Party. Heinrich thinks Tea Partiers favor higher taxes because they want to protect the wealthy.

Does anybody watching these proceedings feel as if they are being treated like they are intelligent? Is the "middle class" supposed to be upset because America won’t be bankrupting our Social Security system faster?

Lies and Word Games