No matter how fatigued the rest of the country is with the endless Republican debate schedule, Mitt Romney must be looking forward to tonight’s face-off in New Hampshire. Despite reports that he is losing ground in some states to Herman Cain and others, Romney knows he has nothing to fear in New Hampshire. Pundits expect him to continue his above-the-fray act while letting his challengers duke it out for King-of-the-Right-Wing. That the media has latched onto this narrative so tightly is disappointing, since even a glance at the candidates’ records shows them often to be apples from the same tree, differing more in rhetoric than actual substance. Case in point: Social Security.

Romney has repeatedly claimed that he is the man to “save Social Security,” insisting that the real danger to the program would come through turning the program into a “Perry scheme.” Yet the policy differences between Romney and Perry are actually not so deep. While Romney does not refer to Social Security explicitly as a Ponzi scheme (Perry’s language), he does compare it to a “criminal fraud,” and suggests if a bank account had been managed in the same way as Social Security, those bankers should go to prison.

Romney has also supported the creation of private retirement accounts, both in years past (when the public was busy rejecting that idea in 2005) and even today, though he is more careful about his language these days. In his book written just last year, he wrote that “individual retirement accounts would encourage more American to invest in the private sector that powers our economy.” And the last time he was running for President, he endorsed President Bush’s push for privatized accounts as a “good idea.” What’s more, Romney would also consider raising the retirement age and means testing Social Security as a way to close the program’s modest shortfall. Romney is full of ideas which may sound reasonable, but are at their base are fundamental, structural changes to Social Security.

Some have doubted the fairness of attacking Romney for statements made four years ago, or even of citing sections from his book to make those claims. After all, he’s evolved as a candidate since then – maybe his views have changed, right? But Romney himself doesn’t play by those rules. He often quotes verbatim from Gov. Perry’s book to score points on Social Security; why isn’t it legitimate for him to be confronted in the same way? Also, Romney’s book in which he airs out many of his policy ideas was published in 2010 as a campaign manifesto, clearly intended to be the platform for his Presidential bid. If that isn’t fair game, what is?

Don’t be fooled by all the maneuvering on Social Security that will no doubt happen tonight and in future debates. As much as Romney wants to play Social Security’s savior to Perry’s menace, the truth is that there’s really not much separating the two at all.

The 12-member Super Committee is down to its final two weeks to produce a plan to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal budget. According to recent reports, both Democratic and Republican proposals have contained sizable cuts from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – all programs that benefit the large majority of Americans in the 99% – while offering little in the way of new revenues.

The forces of the 1% are hard at work to convince us that these cuts are necessary to the fiscal health of the country, and that anything short of these rollbacks will result in economic doom and crippling levels of debt in the coming decades. Their latest attempt to distract from the real issue at hand – the enormous transfer of wealth to the top 1% that has taken place in the last forty years – is to convince us that wealthy seniors are the ones taking from today’s younger generations.

This ‘generational warfare’ angle has unfortunately gained traction in the media recently, and the timing could not be worse. As the Super Committee is deciding whether to cut social programs, these studies imply that since seniors already have much more wealth than the young, it is inappropriate – even irresponsible – not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits.

It is not difficult to spot the errors in these articles. For one, they cite that the median household net wealth of a senior household was $170,494 in 2009, up 42% since 1984. This figure includes the value of all property, assets, and savings. But according to the National Association of Realtors, the median sales price of new homes at that time was $172,100. It is not at all surprising that the elderly have more assets than the young: they have worked (and saved) much longer, and most have accumulated property and homes. But beyond the value of their homes and property, the average senior actually has very little accumulated wealth. That is the scandalous news here, not that seniors have more wealth than young workers. (What’s more, every age group except the young has experienced net wealth gains in the past forty years – not just seniors.)

Of course, it is true that young Americans are also in bad shape – the median net worth of households headed by someone under 35 is only $3,662. There are many causes for this – for example, high unemployment rates for young people(currently around 18%) on account of the recession, which drops earnings and savings levels. But strikingly, cutting Social Security would not help this group at all (especially since they too will rely on it in coming decades). Instead, we need policies targeted to help this age group – better college loan repayment programs, for instance – and most of all, jobs.

As the Super Committee enters crunch time, we would be wise to remember the sage wisdom of FDR, who offered this analysis in 1936:

The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.

Don’t be distracted by false claims of generational warfare – the real struggle is against the forces of the 1% who are trying to squeeze the rest of the country even tighter. We need to remind the Super Committee that in the end, they are accountable to the 99%, who overwhelmingly want no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

For more on how we can save Social Security from conservative attacks, hear Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Campaign for America’s Future’s Roger Hickey, Strengthen Social Security’s Eric Kingson and more at the Take Back the American Dream conference, Oct. 3-5.

At least some of the Republican Presidential candidates have gotten the memo that repeatedly demonizing Social Security has its consequences. After standing by assertions in his book that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and a “monstrous lie,” Gov. Perry has drawn harsh criticism from both angry voters and his fellow candidates. In fact, some of those other candidates, Mitt Romney in particular, are using Perry’s remarks on Social Security to create ideological distance between them on this issue.

One narrative that has emerged in the media in recent weeks is how “sensible” and “cool-headed” Romney appears on Social Security compared with the impulsive and ultra-conservative Perry. This is unfortunate, as a quick glance shows the differences between the leading candidates on Social Security are much more rhetorical than substantive.

The train of threats to Social Security this year keeps on rolling, this time from the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The “E-Verify” program threatens to undermine the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the millions of Americans who rely on it. Assuming the President stays the course and refuses to propose Social Security cuts, E-Verify would represent the biggest threat to Social Security that is currently on the table – aside from the Republican Presidential Candidates. (Click here for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign’s position on E-Verify.)

The legislation in question is called the Legal Workforce Act and comes under consideration by the House Judiciary Committee today. The bill is not primarily designed to cut Social Security spending – rather, it is meant to curb the legal employment of every undocumented worker in America. While immigration-related, a mandatory E-Verify program would also cripple SSA by draining limited funding and imposing heavy burdens on one of the most efficient government programs in existence.

In short, E-Verify is a tool designed to prevent the employment of undocumented workers in the United States. Employers run the personal information of new hires though the E-Verify electronic system, which is connected to the SSA master database of Americans with Social Security numbers. In its developmental stages, the program has been optional for employers, but this new legislation would make it mandatory. Bottom line: E-Verify would add significant responsibilities and workload to an agency that is already overworked and underfunded, and jeopardize the ability of future retirees and disabled workers to get their benefits in a timely fashion. Here’s how:

Mandatory E-Verify would cost American workers their jobs and create confusion at SSA.

When E-Verify finds an inconsistency between a name and that person’s work authorization, it issues a “tentative nonconfirmation” (TNC), after which an employee has several days to contact SSA or DHS to correct the error or risk losing their job. Unfortunately, a significant number of these TNCs are issued in error. Amazingly, over half of all errors were falsely issued “final nonconfirmations,” a definitive finding that someone is not legally authorized to work, forcing their employer to fire them for no good reason. With a total American workforce of 154 million, that translates to over 770,000 jobs lost.

So what does this mean for SSA? It translates to an already overburdened staff that now has to deal with hundreds of thousands of extra calls and office visits, sometimes entailing a lengthy review process for individual cases. In 2008, when there were only 7 million E-Verify queries, 88,000 people called the 1-800 number or visited SSA due to E-Verify errors. If the program were mandatory, SSA would have to review 154 million records in the initial implementation period, causing nearly 2 million more calls into SSA during that period alone.

SSA is already underfunded and overburdened, and cannot afford to take on the consuming and perpetual E-Verify project.

SSA has long been underfunded. Agency administrative expenses alone have been shorted 8 of the last 10 years (compared with the amount it requested of Congress to operate at full capacity). There was a particularly huge cut in 2011, almost a billion dollars below the required level, which was part of the last-minute compromise between Speaker Boehner and the Democrats this past April. Because of those negotiations, SSA has already had to take several measures to limit its regular operations because it simply can’t afford them — many of which will increase costs further.

E-Verify proponents often claim that SSA would be funded to keep up with its new responsibilities. While that’s possible, it’s unlikely, given the Republicans’ current impulse to cut every government program in sight. It’s easy to imagine a scenario whereby SSA is forced to cut even more of its regular operations in order to accommodate the new E-Verify agenda. Critical goals of the agency, such as reducing the unacceptably long backlog for pending claims, would have to be ignored further into the future. Or maybe it was the point all along to cripple the administration of Social Security benefits themselves and attack this extremely popular program through the back door.

According to the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents SSA employees, SSA has already taken the following steps because of the reduced funding:

• Closed field offices 30 minutes early each day
• Stopped mailing the Annual Social Security Statement
• Instituted an agency-wide hiring freeze (excluding the hearings department)

And moreover, if SSA is funded at the current 2011 level through 2012 (probably a best-case scenario at this point), it would mean:

• They would lose another 4,400 employees, on top of the 3,500 they expect to lose this year, for a total reduction of 7,900 employees in two years.
• They would complete 2.8 million disability claims, nearly 400,000 fewer than in 2011, with pending levels rising from 845,000 to about 1.2 million and processing time exceeding 4 months.
• Each furlough day would result in approximately 19,000 retirement claims, 11,000 initial disability claims, and 3,000 hearings they would not be able to complete.

And all of this when there will be 10,000 new retirees claiming benefits each day for the next 20 years!

E-verify would remove millions of taxpayers from the pool that pays into Social Security, thus weakening the solvency of the Trust Fund.

As we’ve seen, the point of E-Verify is to remove illegal workers from legal employment, likely ending their tax contributions to Social Security and other federal revenue streams. This is a wasted opportunity, as any undocumented worker that pays taxes provides a net gain to the system (since they don’t collect benefits). As we all should know by now, undocumented workers are not going to leave the country when E-Verify comes knocking. They fill an important niche in our economy and are here to stay — the only difference is that more of them will be funneled into the underground economy, or miscategorized as (partially tax-exempt) independent contractors. One 2008 bill that would have made E-Verify mandatory without a pathway to legalization would have decreased federal revenue by $22 billion over 10 years.

Of the approximately 8 million undocumented workers, it is estimated that about two-thirds of them pay payroll taxes into the Social Security Trust Fund, accounting for $12 billion in 2007. (The Trust Fund is the total pot of surplus money paid into Social Security that is not immediately sent out as benefits, now totaling $2.7 trillion.) In total, undocumented workers have contributed somewhere between $120 and $240 billion to the Trust Fund, accounting for 5.4 to 10.7 percent of its total assets. In addition, these workers tend to be younger than the average American, so the impact of their tax contributions will grow as the Baby Boomers retire and the percentage of seniors in America rises from 12 percent to 18 percent. According to the chief actuary of SSA, without the contributions of undocumented workers, the Trust Fund would run out of assets six years earlier than estimated in the 2010 Trustees Report. That’s staggering.

According to most experts, mandatory E-Verify wouldn’t affect those who already receive Social Security benefits, because current beneficiaries receive their checks through a mostly automatic process. But this much is sure: nearly everyone else applying for new benefits would be affected. It is anyone’s guess how SSA would respond to being buried with new caseloads at a time when, even pre-E-Verify, “unprecedented workloads combined with declining budgets [have] damaged [the agency's] service delivery,” according to the SSA Commissioner himself. An employment verification system should only be part of comprehensive immigration reform, and should only come into being when these serious flaws have been fixed. For now at least, mandatory E-Verify is the surest way to threaten the social safety net with paralysis.

Amidst the furor over Rep. Paul Ryan’s new budget proposal, advocates for strong retirement programs appear to be in a bind. On one hand, Ryan subjects Medicare and Medicaid to scathing cuts and a restructuring agenda so radical that they could no longer be called real insurance for America’s workers. On the other hand, on a welcome note for Social Security advocates, the budget largely bypassed direct cuts to Social Security (though it did propose some dangerous fast-track procedures for ramming through future cuts). So, is it time for at least half a well-earned Hurrah?

As it turns out, not so much. To see why the Republican plan not only violates the promise of Medicare but also of Social Security, we have to zoom out and consider the overarching goal of both these programs. Though passed in different eras, each aims to provide a certain level of economic security for seniors. And they have been wildly successful: Social Security keeps 20 million Americans out of poverty, while Medicare has improved life expectancy and access to life-saving medications across-the-board. Both of these programs are designed to avoid the horror stories of seniors having to choose between food and prescription drugs, skip family visits, or forego things that make for a decent life.

The Ryan plan’s omission of direct cuts to Social Security is no doubt a victory for the program’s advocates, whether it was due to sober electoral considerations (polling shows the vast majority of Americans strongly oppose benefit cuts) or the messaging efforts of progressive coalitions like the Strengthen Social Security Campaign. But that progress would be instantly negated if Ryan’s cuts to Medicare are enacted, since people would be forced to reallocate their Social Security income (the part that isn’t already dedicated to fixed expenses – food, mortgage payments, etc.) towards medical expenses, which can’t exactly be skimped on. Grandma, can’t that knee replacement wait until next month?

These cuts amount to a direct assault on the purchasing power of Social Security – as well as any other source of retirement savings a person has amassed. The government may as well send seniors their Social Security checks with a forwarding envelope to send right along to the private insurance companies waiting to collect! In the zero-sum world of retirement security programs, cuts in one program necessarily damage the goals of another. The Ryan plan threatens the entire foundation of programs we have established to care for our elderly for three important reasons:

1. We are already experiencing an environment of decreased retirement security on all fronts. Defined benefit pension plans are becoming scarce, while personal savings like 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts are subject to the whims of the stock market. These declines were exacerbated by the recession, but they started long before that. And there’s no reason to think that during the long recovery to come, the inevitable fits and spurts of growth won’t shock another wave of seniors just as they are retiring and have no time left to recover their savings. In this economic climate of insecurity and fear about the future, Social Security remains a steady stream of income that is protected from inflation and is more reliable than the market’s promise, while Medicare provides a similar degree of certainty for health care. Cutting these programs in this climate signals a supreme lack of concern about the plight of retirees.
2. Seniors spend a disproportionate amount of their income on health care, and the Republican plan expects them to pay even more. Currently, elderly persons pay on average 1 in 5 dollars out-of-pocket for health care that is not covered by Medicare, Medicaid or any other insurance. That’s 20% of all disposable income in retirement – on top of the thousands of dollars they’ve already contributed to Medicare over their lifetime.
   Make no mistake: Ryan’s plan does nothing to contain the cost of health care itself, and so it will make no real savings over time: it simply increases the amount seniors will have to pay out-of-pocket for whatever is not covered by the voucher amount. Even the voucher will cover increasingly less over time as health care costs continue to increase – especially since people’s health care needs increase as they age. The White House reports that in the first year the Republican plan goes into effect, a typical 65-year-old who becomes eligible for Medicare would pay an extra $6,400 for health care, more than doubling what he or she would pay if the plan were not adopted. The sad truth is that this doesn’t even help total costs: excess payments to for-profit providers go through the roof under Ryan’s plan, expected to rise five-fold by 2030 from what they are today.
3. Social Security COLA payments are far too small to keep up with these rising costs. Most years, Social Security benefits are boosted with a Cost of Living Adjustment that is supposed to keep pace with inflation. The purpose of the COLA is to retain the purchasing power of the benefit by countering inflation, making sure it stays at a neutral level. Some might believe that the yearly COLA increase could (at least partially) compensate for the increasing medical costs. But the math just doesn’t hold up. As Richard Eskow writes:
   

   According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), seniors entering [Medicare] in 2030 can expect to pay $20,000 out of their own pockets for health care. If Social Security payments continue to be adjusted at the same rate they were over the last decade, the average person on Social Security will receive a little over $21,000 that year…. Even if we take [the CBO’s] more conservative estimate, the new Republican proposal will use up the average person’s entire Social Security benefit within ten years of its taking effect.

   COLA or not, the pace of growth of health care will eventually swallow Social Security – but maybe this is Ryan’s plan all along.

The moral of the story is that demolishing Medicare is, in addition to being terrible policy on its own, is just another way of taking a crack at Social Security. They are two sides of the same coin, and the foundation of reliable retirement security is fundamentally damaged if either of these two programs is cut.

There are also political lessons for Ryan’s budget plan, which will be voted on this week. The every-man-for-himself strategy of some groups on the left trying to prevent cuts for their particular program-of-choice has failed, and it will fail again. This is a time for progressive coalitions that revolve around the same sets of values – economic security, prosperity, fairness to our seniors – to come together and articulate a vision of these programs that goes beyond dollars and cents. More than the defensive rationale offered thus far by the White House for opposing Social Security cuts, a vision like this could remind Americans what these programs mean in a way that goes beyond statistics or graphs. Only such a vision can generate the political support we’ll need to carry us through the coming battles.

On Face the Nation this Sunday, Sen. Mark Warner was asked by host Bob Schieffer why his ‘Gang of Six’ would take on Social Security reform in their forthcoming budget proposal. His response reflected a commonly-held myth about Social Security’s history that greatly exaggerates the changes in the worker-to-retiree ratio between 1950 and today. Warner gave as his rationale the popular refrain that “part of this is just math: 16 workers for every one retiree 50 years ago, three workers for every retiree now.”

Senator Warner is claiming that Social Security is less financially secure than in decades past because it no longer has a sustainable worker-to-retiree ratio. But this statement is highly misleading, and in fact it is a version of the same conservative spin that President Bush often used during his attempt to privatize the program.

In fact, the high ratio of workers to retirees in 1950 was an anomaly, which resulted from the larger number of workers that were incorporated into the program at the time, such as millions of farm workers and domestic workers. Furthermore, because the program was still relatively new, the first workers to contribute to the program had not yet started to collect benefits. To demonstrate how meaningless the 16:1 number it, consider this: Only five years later [in 1955], the worker-to-beneficiary ratio was halved to 8:1, and by 1975 it was down to what it is today. And just ten years earlier, in 1940, the ratio had been 149.5 workers for every one retiree!

The truth is that as the economy grows and technological innovation increases, fewer workers are needed to generate the same and higher levels of economic productivity. So long as the economy is growing, having even a 2:1 ratio of workers to retirees is sustainable. The worker-to-retiree ratio has been stable for almost forty years and has not failed to supply adequate levels of benefits. Nor will it, provided our economy continues to recover at a reasonable rate. Senator Warner should know that the 16-to-1 statistic is little more than a falsely inflated argument that Social Security’s opponents have long used to delegitimize the program and push for calls for its’ “reform.”

(For more on the evolution of the worker-to-retiree ratio, see Nancy J. Altman’s explanation on page 274 of The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Promise to Bush’s Gamble.)