Townhall...
‘Compact’? What
Compact?
By Bill Murchison
The editorial page of The New York Times naturally picked up on
President Obama’s assault on the GOP for assaulting the “social
compact,” a terrible thing to do, by the president’s and the Times’
reckoning.
As Obama phrased it, the Republican goal of bringing the federal
government’s multi-trillion-dollar deficit into line with economic
realities “is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing
the basic social compact in America.” The New York Times throws the
states into this dark gumbo and seconds Obama’s motion in a
subheadline: “From Congress to statehouses, a sweeping attempt to
dismantle the social compact.”
Any dirty, double-dealing plot to tear up a contract obviously deserves
scrutiny. We can start by asking: What social compact? What on God’s
green earth are these high-minded folk talking about?
The Times makes a stab at explaining in an editorial that blames
Republicans for initiating “a project to dismantle the foundations of
the New Deal and the Great Society, and to liberate business and the
rich from the inconveniences of oversight and taxes.” The House’s duly
enacted budget for fiscal 2012, for instance, “would end the guarantee
provided by Medicare and Medicaid to the elderly and the poor.” Then
the worthless scum would cut food stamps! They’d cut Pell grants for
students! And the states -- yes, those varlets! All these governors
seem to want any more is to destroy unions!
It would be an odd way to fulfill a “social compact,” assuming we had
one. Which we don’t, never did, and couldn’t possibly under a system of
democratic governance.
What is a compact? A compact is a formal deal binding parties agreeable
to its terms and obligations. Medicare a compact? Social Security a
compact? Only in the feverish terms of a president contending for his
political life and an editorial page staff scared stiff lest he lose it
next year.
No legislative body is capable of executing a “social compact,”
inasmuch as constituencies, public needs and government capacities
change like spring weather. Nor, constitutionally, can one legislature
bind the next one or any other one after that to fulfillment of terms
it never signed off on. The idea that Congress set up Medicare as a
“compact” is stuff and nonsense. It lacked the authority.
What Congress did do is set up Medicare and Social Security to make the
transfer of money possible from workers to retirees.
Worker A would fork over, say, his Social Security taxes. The funds
would go off to Retiree B -- with an implied promise to A that when he,
too, quit working, he could count on Worker C (then memorizing his
fourth-grade multiplication tables) to fund him.
It’s a funny thing about “implied promises.” With such, there’s usually
more implication than promise. What if there’s no money to pay off --
the precise state at which our “compacts” are fast arriving?
With fewer and fewer active workers supporting more and more retirees,
some custom tailoring becomes essential. Congressman Paul Ryan, like
the majority of intelligent congressmen, has in mind reformulating
Social Security and Medicare -- not to undermine them, as Obama hopes
he can make us believe, but rather to save them before they die of
financial starvation. For instance, he’d keep Americans 55 and over on
Medicare -- in recognition of the fact that there won’t be enough
Medicare tax money to take on more. The care of the presently young and
middle-aged he would subsidize with federal vouchers.
Is it the best way to go? That’s what debates are for -- to put
proffered solutions to the test. No debate is going to be easy -- alas
-- with presidents and editorial writers yelling bloody murder over
compacts that don’t exist.
Nonetheless, it figures. The whole idea that all-knowing government can
foresee and provide for all basic human needs is arrogance and fraud
yoked together. That’s the truth Obama doesn’t wish us to stumble
across. Expect more and more yelling and less and less -- oh, let’s be
polite -- political candor.
Read it at Townhall
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