As David R. Lurie lays out in his excellent Public Notice column, Republicans have been dreaming of doing away with Social Security ever since FDR enacted it, even though it successfully reduced poverty among the elderly. Ditto for Medicare, enacted under LBJ.
The most infuriating part for me is they’ve managed to corral Democrats into going along with the messaging that these anti-poverty programs that people pay into are “entitlements” that “good government” types only want to “reform” and put on a “stronger” fiscal footing. It’s a nauseating way of framing deserving recipients as elite moochers and messaging the truly elite moochers as “sensible” minders of everybody else’s money.
Thank goodness Lurie called this out:
Reagan did succeed in enacting far more modest, but still substantial, cutbacks in Social Security with the support of Democrats — under the cover of a commission led by the then highly respected Alan Greenspan — based on the proposition they were “bolstering” it. This gave rise to an enduring view among many on the right that they could dupe Democrats to join them in cutting holes in the social safety net in the guise of trying to save it — a premise some “good government” types regrettably encouraged.
