Today is the 75th anniversary of Social Security and Unemployment insurance. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the bill into law 75 years ago today in 1935.
To celebrate, the Republicans (especially those new candidates associated with the Tea Parties) want to privatize or end Social Security. They and sitting GOP Senators and Congressmen have also been hating on the unemployed by calling unemployment insurance a welfare handout that is making them lazy and spoiled, and they’re probably taking the money and doing drugs with it (TRMS). Unconscionable.
The GOP seems to have forgotten:
- We’re in a serious recession
- Unemployment is close to 10%
- There are 5-7 people for every job that is created or opens up
- Unemployment is insurance that employees pay into so they have a cushion should they become unemployed because of an economic down-turn or lay-off (or both)
- Laid-off people with a mortgage and family can’t live on the minimum wage; it is nowhere comparable to the paychecks they lost
- Unemployed middle-class people vote
It is abundantly clear to me that none of these block-heads has suffered hard times any time in the past 40 or 50 years, if ever. In fact, most are quite wealthy and have no clue what struggling without a job is like. I seriously doubt they even know anyone who is unemployed or have met with anyone who is unemployed and really listened to that person.
The GOP seems to have no empathy for anyone who needs any help at all, except huge corporations. I wouldn’t be surprised if Orin Hatch, Jon Kyle, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, John Boehner, or Paul Ryan kicked someone lying on the sidewalk instead of helping them up. They’re sure good at kicking the unemployed when they’re down.
The GOP also seems to want to kick old people in retirement by taking away the program they paid into all their working lives, Social Security. (See Social Security Scorecard here) Forget the health care death panel myth. Instead of unplugging her, the GOP just wants Grandma to starve in poverty.
Has the GOP forgotten that the majority of people who vote in mid-term elections are 45 and over?
President Eisenhower realized the folly of mucking with good policy and programs that protect the people:
In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower (R) wrote a letter to his brother. “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history,” Ike said. The president acknowledged in the letter that there are some who advocate such nonsense, but added, “Their number is negligible and they are stupid.” — Steve Benen, Testing the Limits of Grabbing the 3rd Rail, Washington Monthly, Aug. 13, 2010
If Ike is right, the Republican party may disappear entirely if they keep this crap up. That would cause another major problem in U.S. Government. Our system is based on a two-party system of adversarial debate and compromise. Just as we have a balance of power between three equal branches of government, we have a 4th check on excessive power with a two-party system. If we end up with only one party as a major party, I’m not sure what will happen to our system. There doesn’t seem to be a third party that can step in and take the GOP’s place right now. Maybe another William F. Buckley Jr. will appear and straighten the GOP out?
So thanks, GOP, for such a great present for the upcoming mid-term elections. You’re pissing off a lot of your own voters. Those voters may vote for a Democrat just because you’re so far off the cliff that they can’t trust you, or they’ll vote in Independents, like Florida Governor Charlie Crist who left the GOP to remain moderate, and frankly, sane.
Bonus video on the Social Security anniversary from TRMS (7:22):
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Democratic Party, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, Politics, Republican party problems, Social Security, Social Security 75th Anniversary, Unemployment Insurance
August 14th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Aw, this was a really quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this also – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get anything done… Regards
August 14th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
It looks for all the world like the Republican Party is committing suicide. First they did all they could to block the unemployment extension and then, for good measure, attacked the unemployed. What the Republicans had attacked was a segment of the population that accounts for at least fourteen million voters and who knows how many of their family members and friends. Now they call for an end to social security and by doing so has angered the baby boomer generation; the largest segment of the population. The mind boggles when trying to discern just what they are thinking.
August 15th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
“we have a 4th check on excessive power with a two-party system. If we end up with only one party as a major party, I’m not sure what will happen to our system.”
The two-party system does not function to check excessive power in any way, shape or form. The two-party system enables and ensures that excessive power is monopolized by only two-parties, which in practice effectively function as a single unit. It is arguably worse than a one-party system because it creates the illusion of opposition where none in fact exists.
d.eris´s last [type] ..A Vote of No Confidence in the American Political Class
August 16th, 2010 at 6:44 am
I think you know how to write a genuinely good post. Thanks!
August 16th, 2010 at 11:09 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sherri Joubert, Debbie Bills. Debbie Bills said: RT @joubess Happy Anniversary Social Security http://bit.ly/d1yBBa [...]
August 16th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
I’m not following your thinking at all d.eris.
The Democrats and Republicans do not function as a single unit in any way. The opposition I’m seeing is absolutely real, and is getting more vitriolic as the year progresses toward the mid-term election. There is no illusion of opposition, there is very real, very hot opposition, providing a choice in the up-coming election between the party of no and the Democratic Party.
The U.S. system is designed to function with two main political parties. The first two parties in the U.S. were the Democratic-Republicans and the Whigs. Before the Civil War, the Whig party lost so much support that it died. It ran a candidate when the very first Republican was elected to office, Abraham Lincoln, but by then, the Whigs were a small, fringe party and they disappeared.
Fast forward 150 years, and we have the Republican Party and the Democratic party, along with several other small and rather insignificant parties. We also have Independents who choose neither party. If the Republican party is significantly diminished or disappears, I don’t want to see the Tea Parties (they aren’t one party by any stretch of the imagination) become one of the two main parties. I doubt they could because they are so fragmented among themselves. But their fragmentation and radical beliefs are infecting the Republican party and fragmenting it as well.
We depend on party opposition to govern. We are not like Parliamentary governments, and that is one of the main ways we are different. We do not form coalition governments, we have a party in power, or a party with slightly more power than the other and the system is adversarial by design. We don’t have votes of no confidence. We elect the House every two years and we’re stuck with it, and we elect 1/3 of the Senate every two years, and we’re stuck with it. Then we throw them into the ring and let them slug it out if that’s what it comes to.
Two opposing parties does not make a monopoly by definition.
August 16th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Roy,
I agree. I don’t think the GOP has given who they are pissing off much thought, nor the long-term consequences of that lack of thought. There are 14 million unemployed voters, about 31 million retired people on social security today and most are voters, and there are 72 million baby boomers. The first year of the baby boomers (born in 1946) will start to retire in 2011.
Since I don’t know how many boomers are also unemployed, I’ll make the following very conservative calculation leaving the unemployed out: 72 million plus 31 million is 103 million people. The U.S. population is about 305 million people. The census may change that, but it won’t be a huge change. So the GOP is pissing off about 34% of the U.S. population, a percentage where almost all are voters.
In 2008, there were 169 million registered voters, so the GOP may be pissing off as many as 61% of all registered voters. The elderly and most boomers are the majority of registered voters who actually show up to vote. Younger voters aren’t as reliable when it comes to turn-out.
I should break it down more into probable percentages of Democrats, Republicans, and third parties. I should also look up how many boomers are disabled and already on social security, how many retired people are registered voters and how many boomers are on unemployment and registered to vote, and how many boomers who are not on unemployment who are registered to vote.
This is a very quick and dirty, back of the envelope calculation. I think everyone gets the idea, though, and I don’t think it would be that far off the number if I went through a much more rigorous analysis.