Could it be that the Senate Majority Leader is so clueless with respect to Social Security that he believes it is a solvent program? Harry Reid recently reiterated the claim he made last year on Meet the Press: that we are not in a crisis in Social Security, that Social Security is fully funded for the next forty years, and that the arithmetic works. What’s worse, this man had the audacity to suggest that the problem of Social Security was merely fiction — perpetuated by people who do not like government!
The facts: Social Security is underfunded to the tune of $ 7.7 trillion, and it’s getting worse every day. Had any private company or organization operated in such an underfunded way, its principal would have been charged criminally.
Clearly, we cannot have rational discourse over matters as serious as Social Security if the Senate Majority Leader does not care to realize that the program is in an absolute calamitous state. It’s difficult to imagine that he would intentionally try to dupe the moderator with his flim-flam. The only plausible explanation is that Harry Reid is so intellectually challenged that he doesn’t understand the issue himself.
Anything short of his resignation says something about the fact that politics trumps rational analysis in our political system. That Reid is allowed to speak such buffoonery and not be excoriated by anyone, or even that such a person can get to this political level and be so flagrantly incompetent is very disconcerting. I am staggered by the fact that his comments are not the headlines of all the major newspapers.