[NYTr] FAIR: Milbank Defends Alarmist Column on Social Security

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

See the earlier FAIR activism Alert here:

FAIR: Social Security Scaremongering - ABC, WaPo Push "Crisis" Myths
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071015/070463.html


FAIR - Oct 22, 2007
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3203

Activism Update

Milbank Defends Post Column

Piece blended Social Security, Medicare problems

After FAIR's October 19 action alert criticized coverage of Social
Security in the Washington Post and on ABC News, Washington Post
columnist Dana Milbank responded to one FAIR activist with this message:

    "Don't you think it a bit unfair of "FAIR," in complaining about my
"context," to ignore the fact that I was writing about the combined
impact of Medicare and Social Security?"

While most of Milbank's column (10/16/07) obviously concerned Social
Security (the headline "Smile, Smile--You're on Social Security!" was
no accident), he did link the Social Security and Medicare programs in
explaining how baby boomers would "begin to bankrupt the nation." But
treating the two as though they are similar does not make Milbank's
argument any more persuasive; in fact, it makes it more deceptive.

As economist Dean Baker has long argued, Social Security is financially
sound for the next several decades. Medicare, by comparison, faces a
more immediate problem due to rising healthcare costs (CEPR, 9/03).
Baker (10/19/06) once critiqued media attempts to link the two programs
by noting that reporters could do this with almost any government
program; one could write about the coming budget crunch due to the
"combined cost of Medicare, Medicaid and maintaining the roads and
sidewalks in front of the Washington Post."

Economist Paul Krugman made a similar point in his New York Times
column (3/26/04):

    "It has become standard practice among privatizers to talk as if
there is some program called Socialsecurityandmedicare. They hope to
use scary numbers about future medical costs to panic us into
abandoning a retirement program that's actually in pretty good shape.
But the deteriorated outlook for Medicare says nothing, one way or
another, about either the sustainability of Social Security (no
problem) or the desirability of private retirement accounts (a lousy
idea).

Even on Medicare, don't panic. It's not like a private health plan that
will go belly up when it runs out of money; it's just a government
program, albeit one supported by a dedicated tax. Nobody thinks
America's highways will be doomed if the gasoline tax, which currently
pays for highway maintenance, falls short of the system's needs -- if
politicians want to sustain the system, they will. The same is true of
Medicare. Rising medical costs are a very big budget issue, but 2019
isn't a drop-dead date."

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