The Collegian

Issue date: 9/11/07 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Collegian

As the presidential campaign goes on, so does the pandering.

Hillary Clinton, like many of the other candidates, has recently pandered to the gays and the unions by taking part in their debates, and has even pandered to southerners by spontaneously developing a southern accent on certain occasions.

The latest group she has pandered to is the old. She has used the favorite scare tactic of the left, telling the old how the other guy wants to take away their God-given Social Security. Hillary promised the line of "no benefit cuts, no raising the retirement age, no privatization."

That line is fine and dandy for the more senile voting bloc, but for those of us who think a little more clearly, there are some major problems with the proposal Hillary is putting forward.

Hillary wants a "renewed national commitment to Social Security," which she describes as "one of the greatest inventions in American democracy." Yet for all her grand statements she is ignoring the fact that Social Security is going bankrupt and is failing. In FDR's day there were 32 people paying into Social Security for every one pulling money out.

Today that figure is a little more than three people paying in for each one being paid, and as more baby boomers retire the situation is not going to improve. In 2018, little more than a decade away, Social Security will start paying out more than it takes in and every year after that it will go further in debt until it is hundreds of billions of dollars in debt, until it is totally bankrupt by 2042. Some people quibble about the exact day it will go bankrupt, but no one other than Hillary thinks Social Security is doing well.

Hillary's approach to this situation reminds me of an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand with a Mack truck of bankruptcy speeding toward it.

When Social Security goes, what will we do? Will we skyrocket taxes to cover the difference, send the economy into free fall, and raise unemployment? Will we abandon the program, leaving paying Americans, the group current SMC students will find themselves in, with nothing? Whoever the President is, the problem must be fixed because the Hillary plan for do nothing now and hope for the best is a plan for economic ruin.

During speeches Hillary is fond of touting her "experience" but so far her only experience making undeliverable promises.

Hillary is just another politician, and like the rest of them, she isn't doing anything.

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