They're still after him.
TPM has a
timely reminder that the destruction of Social Security has been probably the longest-standing policy goal of the Republican party, now in its eighth decade. From the time of its inception by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, Republicans have actively fought for its demise in the first few decades through repeal, and in the last several by trying to chip away at it so that it would eventually weaken enough to be easy to kill outright.
The 114th Congress has begun with a Republican party that is emboldened and as determined to cripple Social Security as they have been since President George W. Bush's disastrous 2005 effort to privatize it. Georgia Republican Rep. Tom Price has taken over the House Budget Committee from Rep. Paul Ryan, and has even bigger ambitions to destroy the program than his predecessor, now even talking about privatization, something Ryan would only extend to Medicare. Price told the Heritage Action for America “Conservative Policy Summit” on Monday that he wants to "begin to normalize the discussion and debate about Social Security." By "normalize, he means cut it:
"[W]hether it's means testing, whether it's increasing the age of eligibility […] whether it's providing much greater choices for individuals to voluntarily select the kind of manner in which they believe they ought to be able to invest their working dollars as they go through their lifetime."
Price and his fellow Republicans in leadership have set the stage to begin this effort, and as usual did it with some
hostage taking. This time the hostages are about 11 million people who receive Social Security disability benefits. That program is expected to hit a shortfall next year, and benefits will be automatically cut unless the program gets an influx of cash. This has happened in the past, in both the retirement and the disability programs. What has always happened in the past—with no big controversy—is that Congress has authorized the transfer of funds from one of the programs to the other. But last week the House passed a new rule that says Congress can't do that any more unless they also take some action to "fix" (read slash) the Social Security system.
Republicans are pretending that this move was a way to keep the undeserving disabled people from stealing older Americans benefits. They're trying to pit one group against another, in hopes that they'll scare enough seniors to get the support to push it through. But what they're really doing is setting up the retirement system for the kinds of "reforms"—including privatization—Price laid out.