Michael: Once of two things is true. Either you intend to hurt (or defraud!) the current generation of seniors, or you intend to fully protect them while you reform Social Security in some way for younger voters who do not care enough to vote on the issue.
If Social Security is going to be reformed, it’s going to be by politicians who appear visibly more interested in protecting it than ideologically transforming it.
Perry did not appear that way last night.
By the way, the Democrats have an alternative strategy: imposing Social Security taxes on people like me who make more than $100k. I don’t know how the numbers add up, but we cannot pretend there is no other strategy on the ground here. We could make things work by advancing the age of retirement, fiddling with COLA increases, and increasing the income cutoffs on Social Security.
Or we could simply gut things like the Department of Education, to help reduce the Social Security gap. Personally, this is my preferred solution: no money for new or old spending programs until we’ve fully funded Social Security for the next 50 years. (Medicare too!)
A pension plan with an army. From a libertarian perspective, is that so bad?