The Truth Behind the Social Security and Medicare Alarm Bells
by Robert Reich
May 13, 2009,
What are we to make of yesterday's report from the trustees of the Social
Security and Medicare trust funds that Social Security will run out of
assets in 2037, four years sooner than previously forecast, and Medicare's
hospital fund will be exhausted by 2017, two years earlier than predicted a
year ago?
Reports of these two funds' demise are not new. Fifteen years ago, when I
was a trustee of the Social Security and the Medicare trust funds (which
meant, essentially, that I and a few others met periodically with the
official actuary of the funds, received his report, asked a few questions,
and signed some papers) both funds were supposedly in trouble. But as I
learned, the timing and magnitude of the trouble depended a great deal on
what assumptions the actuary used in his models. As I recall, he then
assumed that the economy would grow by about 2.6 percent a year over the
next seventy-five years. But go back into American history all the way to
the Civil War -- including the Great Depression and the severe depressions
of the late 19th century -- and the economy's average annual growth is
closer to 3 percent. Use a 3 percent assumption and Social Security is flush
for the next seventy-five years.
Yes, I know, the post-war Baby Boom is moving through the population like a
pig through a python. The number of retirees eligible for benefits will
almost double to 79.5 million in 2045 from 40.5 million this year. But we
knew that the Boomers were coming then, too. What we didn't know then was
the surge in immigration. Yet immigrants are mostly young. Rather than being
a drain on Social Security when the Boomers need it, most immigrants will be
contributing to the system during these years, which should take more of the
pressure off.
Even if you assume Social Security is a problem, it's not a big problem.
Raise the ceiling slightly on yearly wages subject to Social Security
payroll taxes (now a bit over $100,000), and the problem vanishes under
harsher assumptions than I'd use about the future. President Obama suggested
this in the campaign and stirred up a hornet's nest because this solution
apparently dips too deeply into the middle class, which made him backtrack
and begin talking about raising additional Social Security payroll taxes on
people earning over $250,000. Social Security would also be in safe shape if
it were slightly more means tested, or if the retirement age were raised
just a bit. The main point is that Social Security is a tiny problem, as
these things go.
Medicare is entirely different. It's a monster. But fixing it has everything
to do with slowing the rate of growth of medical costs -- including, let's
not forget, having a public option when it comes to choosing insurance plans
under the emerging universal health insurance bill. With a public option,
the government can use its bargaining power with drug companies and
suppliers of medical services to reduce prices. And, as I've noted, keep
pressure on private insurers to trim costs yet provide effective medical
outcomes.
Don't be confused by these alarms from the Social Security and Medicare
trustees. Social Security is a tiny problem. Medicare is a terrible one, but
the problem is not really Medicare; it's quickly rising health-care costs.
Look more closely and the real problem isn't even health-care costs; it's a
system that pushes up costs by rewarding inefficiency, causing unbelievable
waste, pushing over-medication, providing inadequate prevention, over-using
emergency rooms because many uninsured people can't afford regular doctor
checkups, and spending billions on advertising and marketing seeking to
enroll healthy people and avoid sick ones.
***
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/13-9
Senate Panel Probes Legality of Torture Memos
by William Fisher
Inter Press Service: May 13, 2009
NEW YORK - "An ethical train wreck" was the phrase used by one witness to
describe the legal reasoning behind the Justice Department's recently
released memos justifying the use of waterboarding and other forms of
"enhanced interrogation techniques".
The phrase came during the testimony of David Luban, a law professor at
Georgetown University, before a panel on administrative oversight and the
courts subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, chaired the hearing.
Whitehouse said the administration of former President George W. Bush
inundated the U.S. public in a "near avalanche of falsehood" on the subject
of detainee treatment.
"We were told that waterboarding was determined to be legal, but were not
told how badly the law was ignored, bastardised and manipulated by the
Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, nor were we told how
furiously government and military lawyers rejected the defective OLC
opinions," Whitehouse said.
The panel also heard from Bush-era State Department counselor Philip
Zelikow, who testified that he unsuccessfully dissented from the Justice
Department view that harsh interrogation practices were either legal or
moral.
He told the subcommittee - the first congressional panel to address
allegations of torture - that Bush administration officials engaged in a
"collective failure" on detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists.
He added that the issue was one that senior Bush administration officials
did not wish to discuss. He told the panel that he was ordered to rescind a
dissenting memorandum he had written on the interrogation issue and to find
and destroy all copies of it.
Zelikow, who served as executive director of the 9/11 Committee that
investigated the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, said that Justice
Department memos on "enhanced interrogation techniques" were "unsound, even
unreasonable". He called for a "thorough public inquiry" into the issue.
"The U.S. government adopted an unprecedented programme of coolly calculated
dehumanising abuse and physical torment to extract information," Zelikow
said.
"This was a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one. It was a collective failure,"
he said.
The panel also heard from a retired special agent of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). Ali Soufan, who interrogated some suspected al Qaeda
detainees in the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, testified from behind
a screen to hide his identity.
Soufan said he gained valuable intelligence by using traditional
non-coercive FBI interrogation techniques when questioning suspected al
Qaeda prisoners.
He said he was replaced at the insistence of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), which he said was using inexperienced contractors, not CIA
operatives, to conduct interrogations.
Soufan told senators that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were
ineffective and unreliable, and "as a result harmful to our efforts to
defeat al Qaeda".
"It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts
against al Qaeda," he said.
A cautious counterpoint was provided throughout the hearing by Senator
Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, who has
served for many years as a military lawyer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
Graham repeatedly made the point that those who pressed for more aggressive
interrogation techniques were not "evil" people, but simply those who were
trying to protect the country from the next terrorist attack.
He said it should come as no surprise that responsible lawyers can look at
the same facts and come to honestly different conclusions.
Prof. Luban disagreed with that reasoning. He told the committee he thought
it "impossible that lawyers of such great talent and intelligence could have
written these memos in the good faith belief that they accurately state the
law."
He added that Justice Department lawyers had a special responsibility not to
"rubber stamp administration policies" or "provide cover for illegal
actions".
Luban concluded that memos written by Justice Department lawyers in the Bush
administration "cherry-picked" legal precedents and failed to consider or
mention a 1983 case in which Texas law enforcement officers were prosecuted
and jailed for waterboarding prisoners to make them confess.
"A legal adviser must use independent judgment and give candid, unvarnished
advice," Luban said.
Three Bush-era lawyers, all working in the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel,
are the authors of a series of controversial memos recently released by the
Obama administration. The so-called "torture memos" were written by JohnYoo,
now a law professor in California, Jay Bybee, now a federal appeals court
judge, and their successor in the office, Steven G. Bradbury.
The Office of Legal Counsel is the DOJ unit that provides the president and
other senior government officials with definitive opinions on a wide range
of issues. Its views traditionally carry great weight.
Wednesday's testimony came amid calls for these lawyers - and their
superiors - to be criminally prosecuted, disbarred, or investigated in depth
as part of a wider Congressional probe of former government officials and
contractors for their activities during the Bush war on terror.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a
Vermont Democrat, has proposed a "truth commission" to investigate potential
Bush-era war crimes. Others, including many human rights groups, have
pressed for appointment of a special prosecutor by the Department of
Justice.
An investigation is currently being carried out by the Senate Intelligence
Committee. However, most of the testimony in that probe will be secret
because of the classified material involved, and it will be many months
before the investigation is completed.
President Obama's reaction to these and other approaches has ranged from
lukewarm to ambivalent. While noting that "no one is above the law," he has
said repeatedly that his inclination is to look forward, not backward.
Copyright © 2009 IPS-Inter Press Service
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