In most cultures the elderly are afforded respect and reverence they earn over a lifetime of experience, toil, and sacrifice and are cared for either by their family or depend on a pension they paid for during their working lives. America’s seniors were given security in their old age when Franklin D. Roosevelt fought to enact the Social Security Trust requiring workers to contribute to their own retirement, and it has meant the difference between abject poverty and a semblance of security as workers’ bodies deteriorated to the point they could no longer work and waited to die.
Republicans and their wealthy paymasters have long lusted to pillage senior citizens’ pension funds through various schemes ranging from embezzlement to leveraging companies into bankruptcy such as the vulture capitalist tactic perfected by Willard Romney’s company Bain Capital. Americans should take a serious look at the evolving story of Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing, because the tactics Governor Rick Snyder is using to deny 30,000 public sector employees their hard-earned pensions is a warning of what Republicans have in store for Americans at risk of losing their Social Security retirement income to spending cuts, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, and the phony debt and deficit scam.
Last week after Detroit filed bankruptcy, turnaround specialist Kevyn Orr and Snyder agreed that retired city workers were going to lose their promised benefits as part of Detroit’s debt obligation. Orr and Snyder claimed about half of the “unpayable debts” driving the bankruptcy was the unfunded portion of public employee and retiree’s pension and healthcare liabilities owed to 30,000 workers, and Snyder particularly rejected the idea of a federal bailout to honor the contract Detroit made with public employees. Both Orr and Snyder made it perfectly clear that bankruptcy meant cutting back promised benefits regardless a federal bailout would allow Detroit to keep its end of the contract with its workers. In fact, before Orr filed for bankruptcy he implied he preferred resolving Detroit’s debt by forcing pensioners to absorb the pain of a bankruptcy they had absolutely nothing to do with. If the tactics sound remotely like the Republican plan to cut Medicare and Social Security to pay off their Bush-era debt and deficit and give the wealthy greater tax cuts, it is because it is the same plan.
For a state so “drowning in debt” that Snyder levied brutal cuts to schools, social programs, and public sector workforce, he had no problem slashing corporate taxes 86% while eliminating tax credits for children, senior citizens, and cutting funding for Michigan schools. To impose pain on Michigan’s poorest residents and fund $2 billion in tax cuts for the rich, Snyder raised taxes 31% on Michigan’s poorest residents that wealthier tax payers avoided. Even before Snyder’s tax restructuring, the poorest Michigan residents paid 8.9% in taxes while the richest one-percent paid only 5.3%, and it only got worse for the poor after Snyder was finished. Now, in typical Republican fashion, Snyder is punishing seniors to pay his wealthy corporate donors, and Republicans in Congress are taking the ploy a step farther and intend to blame Social Security recipients for the plight GOP economic malfeasance is wreaking on younger Americans.
During their August recess while Republicans announce their crusade to “fight Washington for all Americans,” they will specifically summon and target “millennials” to warn them that if they cannot slash funding for social programs for the poor and cut retired Americans Social Security pensions, they will not be able to use the money to cut corporate and the wealthy’s taxes in Paul Ryan’s budget. Republicans have already announced their intent to hold the debt ceiling hostage, and the ransom is eliminating the Affordable Care Act, steep education cuts, environmental deregulation, 14.9% tax cuts for the rich, a 10% tax hike for the poor, privatizing Medicare, and cuts to Social Security. Republicans have spent the past year attempting to convince younger Americans that their economic woes are directly tied to the crushing deficit seniors receiving Social Security benefits they paid in to caused, and despite Social Security has no impact on the deficit, or that seniors are not responsible for declining wages, no jobs, and crushing college debt, retired Americans will take the brunt of the blame.
The Republican “divide and conquer” ploy’s success will depend on millennials’ belief that if they allow Republicans to raid their parents Social Security pensions and hand them to Wall Street the rich will pass it on to the young who still cannot find jobs, are drowning in college debt, and face a job market of part-time jobs, no minimum wage, no overtime pay, and retired parents with no security to help them survive in their old age. Rick Snyder followed the Bain Capital model in raping public sector workers’ pensions, and Republicans in Congress see Snyder’s success in Michigan as impetus to implement the model to decimate Social Security and hand it to Wall Street. Willard Romney’s company made millions from stealing pensions of each company they leveraged into bankruptcy, and they used the same tactics Snyder and turnaround special Kevyn Orr are using to deny Detroit public employees the promised benefits they earned over a lifetime of work.
Bankruptcy judges have the option of allowing a company, or a city, to cancel pension and retiree health benefits, and it is true Michigan public sector unions have the law on their side, but there is no guarantee the law will not be changed and it serves as a warning that any American expecting the pension they paid in to, whether by contract or not, will be there when they retire. Social Security recipients are protected by the Trust set in law nearly 80 years ago, but Republicans have amassed the support of powerful vested interests and legislators who see the phony debt and deficit scam as their opportunity to raid the trust and spirit trillions of dollars away to Wall Street. Republicans have eliminated food stamp funding, cut Meals on Wheels, housing assistance, and aid to poor women and children, and they have no more regard for senior Americans well-being than they do the economically disadvantaged. They hold the elderly in contempt at the same level as the poor, and possibly more since seniors are of little use to big business and are as disposable as a worn out piece of equipment.
Americans are no different than any other culture or society and they do not believe the elderly, their parents and grandparents, should be cast off in their old age and left to die of infirmity, starvation, or homelessness when they can no longer create wealth for big business. In fact, Americans overwhelmingly support expanding Social Security regardless it means higher taxes and they particularly support raising the cap so the wealthy pay the same percentage of income as any other working American. If any American has any doubts about what Republicans have planned for Social Security, or retirees expecting promised pension and health benefits they paid for throughout their working lives, take a long hard look at what Rick Snyder and turnaround specialist Kevyn Orr intend doing to pensioners in Detroit because it foreshadows Republicans in Congress intent for Social Security.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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