Questioning Senator Santorum on Social Security

Colin McNickle has some very odd views on Social Security:

Now he’s shilling for Americans United for (state your cause here). Its cause du jour – actually, a return to the group’s 2005 fight – is Social Security. That’s as in preserving, protecting and defending a quite onerous Big Government bait-and-switch racket that would make Charles K. Ponzi, father of the Ponzi scheme, most proud. How any educated person can believe that the current Social Security program – which, unaltered, goes belly up in 36 years – is anywhere close to sustainable surely is an exercise in believing that one can wipe with the water and wash with the towel … Among the first pols to be targeted by the barkers for socialistic preservation is Sen. Rick Santorum, in the fight of his political life against state Treasurer Bobby Casey Jr., who has never met an issue to which he couldn’t perform a sterling Gene Kelly salute. Granted, economics is not Mr. Santorum’s strong suit. How could it be, given his love of price controls (in the form of gasoline anti-price gouging and anti-“unfair pricing” legislation), his support of a higher minimum wage, his backing of the boondoggle that is Pittsburgh’s North Shore Connector and an expansive plan to subsidize higher education that will only encourage every college and university to jack up prices? But on Social Security, Santorum’s right on the money … Where does one begin? How about simply, courtesy of Dan Lips, a policy adviser with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, in a 2005 commentary for National Review Online: “Without reform, a 30-year-old worker today should expect a 27-percent benefit cut at their retirement party in 2042. This is despite the fact that one out of every eight dollars he or she earns over a half-century in the work force will be paid into Social Security.” … Phased-in Social Security privatization – personal accounts earning market rates of return – is the only answer. Senior citizens aren’t affected. And because returns from privatized accounts on their worst modern-era day outstrip Social Security’s negligible returns, a very modest tax on those increased earnings, set aside in a true trust fund – not a drawer full of IOUs on which the current system rests – can serve the least fortunate among us.

Ah yes, McNickle is a member of the Cato free lunches for everyone crowd as he claims one a better return on one’s investment without realizing that this higher expected return is simply the compensation for bearing more risk. And I guess he does not realize that the Bush privatization plan will reduce the 30-year-old worker’s benefit by even more than 27%. But I agree with McNickle that economics is not Senator Santorum’s strong suit as I have to wonder about the degree in economics that McNickle received from National Review University.

But since McNickle brought up Americans United, let me thank them for the email as I pass along their question to the Senator contained in the email’s press release:

In response to the frothing of the mouth diatribe today from Colin McNickle, editorial page director for the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, Americans United, the group which derailed President Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security in 2005, asked Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) if he agrees with one of Pennsylvania’s largest newspapers and one of his most ardent supporters that Social Security is “a quite onerous Big Government bait-and-switch racket that would make Charles K. Ponzi, father of the Ponzi scheme, most proud.”

Senator?