Left of Social Security

To many Libreals, Social Security is part of the safety net that helps keep our country secure.  It provides a way to ensure that the elderly and disabled are, at least partially, taken care of financially.  Their philosophy is based on the principle that a society is only as strong as its weakest members.  By providing money that will boost the income of those who don’t have enough income to live on because they have a disability or have reached the point in their life where they can’t work anymore, it increases their purchasing power and helps the incomes of those who pay the taxes that fund Social Security.

If the Libreal plans for Social Security are boiled down, it comes down to ensuring the future of the program by protecting the funds and ensuring that they are available for Social Security and disability payments, and that the money isn’t taken for other programs.  The biggest change that the Libreals have proposed is combining the accounts for Social Security and disability.

The money for both programs is kept in separate accounts and taken as separate pieces in income taxes.  When one program seems to be running short for a month, it has been common practice to shift money between the two.  There are some in Congress who want the practice to stop and who insist that if the program cannot sustain itself with the funding it has it should be cut.

The Democrats have proposed an alternative: rather than collecting separate payments for separate accounts, collect one payment for everything and place it in the same account.  This would remove the need to transfer money between the two, and since the money is handled by the same department, could reduce some of the redundancy in the programs.  Because both of the systems are built on the principle that people who can work pay in and people who can’t take out (with the assumption that they will be taking money when they can’t work), it makes sense to them to unify the two and put the money for both in the same pot.

The Conservatives have argued against this from the traditionalist point of view.  They insist that the system was set up as two different pots for a reason, and that when they were set up it was intended that they were to each be self-sustaining.  While I am sure they enjoy the thought of less government involvement that combining the two accounts would likely bring about, they argue that if one is not sustainable then they should not take money from the other to prop it up.  If one system lacks the funding to continue, then the eligibility criteria be changed to ensure that it has the money that it needs.

In a sense the Conservative plans of privatizing the retirement portion and the Liberal plan to combine the accounts both hope to ensure sustainability of the Social Security program.  While they both go about it in a different manner, everyone agrees that the system itself is important.  Just not how to keep it going.

Right of Social Security

The original Social Security Act was signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on 14 August 1935.  The bill stated that it was “an act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws.”  The program is currently funded entirely by payroll taxes and handled by the Social Security Administration under the Department of Revenue.  It was intended as not only a retirement plan, but also a safety net for those who found themselves unable to work.

There are many who feel that the Social Security system will run out of money in the near future.  However, there are just as many who insist that it will not.  Because there is a large disagreement over whether or not the system can sustain itself, as it currently does, there is an equally large chasm between the liberals and conservatives who look to reform the program.

The Republican candidates (those still in the race and those who have since dropped out) almost universally attest that the way to ensure the future of the Social Security system in the United States is to privatize the system.  This would reduce the government’s role in the process and allow the people to decide how much money to put into the system, when to pay it out, and where it goes.  The vast majority of them also insist that the retirement age needs to be increased.  This would reduce the number of citizens who qualify for payments and would thereby reduce the cost of supporting them.  The name of the game here is reducing the cost and the governments roll.

While there are some very extreme policies that were proposed (Mike Huckabee proposed changing the accounts to 401K plans and Rick Santorum theorized that “abortion culture” was reducing the potential population and causing the problems) the majority of the candidates for president, and those in Congress agree that raising the minimum age (because people live longer) and privatizing the system will lead to a longer life with less cost to the average American and more choice.

The liberals will argue that while people do indeed live much longer than they did over 80 years ago, that doesn’t mean that they are still capable of working later.  Their bodies still change the same way that people did when the Social Security Act was passed.  They will also argue vehemently against privatizing the system.  The key argument in this case is that it will create a much larger risk.  If all of the citizens of the United States have all of their retirement plans invested in the public market then the accounts can lose their reliability.  The liberals would say it is putting all of your eggs in one basket; when the markets tank again and both private and Social Security accounts are controlled by that market then Social Security loses its ability to be an effective safety net.

Left and Right of Food Assistance

The Democrats are seen widely as the champions of food stamps.  Because their platform is partially built around helping the needy and attempting to uplift those who are struggling.  The largest program for food assistance is SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).  It provides monetary assistance to lower income families to help ensure that they get the food that they need.

The liberals will generally fight to increase funding for the program citing statistics showing that there are 48.8 million food insecure people in the United States, of that 16.2 million are children.  With more funding, at least in theory, fewer of those people would be without food.

The conservatives look at the rapidly inflating cost of SNAP and argue that the nation cannot afford it.  The liberals propose that the funding come from other programs.  They contend that feeding those who are hungry is too important to skip.  To the Democrats, SNAP is essential.

For many liberals the inflation of food assistance spending stems from a bad economy.  Because the economy has been doing poorly people have lost their jobs.  Because they lost their jobs they need to use food stamps to ensure that they are still eating.  The key point of the liberal plans for food assistance is that it is something that the government cannot scrimp on.  The cost may be temporary while people are out of work or it may be longer term if people have trouble finding long term, gainful employment.

Either way, the liberals believe that the program should receive all of the funding it needs.  The money to fund the program can be found.  The typical proposal is what the conservatives usually call a “Robin Hood Tax.”  The taxes on the wealthiest Americans is increased and then used to fund programs that help the poor.

By collecting this extra revenue the liberals hope to find the money that is needed to fund the ever growing number of people who receive food assistance from the government.  By finding a way to cover more people the goal is to reduce the number of people who are food insecure in the United States.

The conservatives lean in the other direction.  Rather than attempting to increase funding to cover more people, they hope to reduce the government’s role.  While most will admit that it is impossible to get rid of the program that so many of their constituents benefit from, they will argue that there are better ways to handle it.

Most conservatives will argue that it is important to address the root causes of the food insecure families in the nation.  Rather than providing a way to get food through government assistance, they hope to help those individuals find jobs that will give them the income needed to provide the food themselves.

This would allow the government to reduce the deficit and reduce its role in everyday life.  If you were to boil the conservative plans down to the bare essence, it would be to focus on jobs and allowing the free market to ensure that the food is easily accessible.  The biggest argument made by those on the right is that by propping up the people with food stamps they are removing the incentive to fix the problems that leave them needing the assitance.

Right of Education

The conservatives in the United States have not been nearly as vocal about their beliefs regarding the higher education system.  However, a lot of their views can be gleaned through looking at the legislation they pass and their policies when in power.  The vast majority of it is pretty expected.  They pass laws reducing government funding of public K-12 and public colleges/universities.  The goal being to reduce government’s role in the system.

The most radical of the conservatives would argue that the government should not be providing education to the public, and that it should be provided, and maintained, by the free market.  The principle argument is that if the schools make themselves too expensive students will not attend because it is affordable.  If the schools are run privately, yes they could charge whatever they wanted to, but they would also have to be competitive.  This not only applies to the cost but to the quality of the education.  By privatizing the system it would allow for greater competition and choice.  It would potentially eliminate exorbitant out of state tuition because the state isn’t paying, and it would bring a better balance between cost and quality.

The more “mainstream” policy stance among conservatives is the desire to reduce federal college loans and instead replace them with insured private loans.  This could create greater transparency in the system and allow students and their parents to make a more informed decision when deciding to take a loan and how much they will borrow.  It also gives them a choice of where they can borrow which would lead to competitive interest rates.  The goal in the end is to greatly reduce, or remove, the government cost of education.  This shift would, in a way similar to privatizing the schools entirely, allow for the free market to decide how students will pay for their school and by changing the availability of funding, it could potentially reduce the overall cost of the education.  They also believe that there should be a higher focus on community college and trade schools built around job specific skills that would better lend themselves directly to a profession.

Most liberals would have essentially the same argument for both plans.  The free market would not result in an equal outcome.  For the extreme policy they would insist that because corporations and people are built specifically to make a profit, the quality of the education would suffer.  Because they would be trying to make the most money possible, they would likely hire substandard teachers because they could be paid less and hike up tuition to increase the bottom line.  They would argue against both points in the second proposal for many of the same reasons.  By privatizing the loans it would allow for less regulation of interest rates and allow more predatory lending.  It would also reduce access to the funding that many families rely on to send their children to school.  They would speculate reducing the access to education it would reduce the ability to pay for the next generation’s access down the line and nearly kill off upward mobility in the economy for lower class families.