Renewing America’s Mistakes

The last two evenings of the Democratic National Convention have been every bit as full of light, fluff, and glittery prose one would expect at the four day pajama party.  Speakers have grinned through their spot to cover past offenses and dished out the same misty rhetoric over and over again.  It’s all been very big on self-congratulations and very light on actual policy.

One of the most glaring omissions has been social security.  It’s no secret this is a very important issue to FreedomWorks.  In fact, our president, Matt Kibbe, has weighed in on this blog twice before wondering if the presidential candidates will get serious about retirement security.

If two throw-away lines can be considered serious then yes, the social security crisis is finally being addressed.

On Tuesday night, Senator Hillary said,” Now, John McCain is my colleague and my friend.  He has served our country with honor and courage … John McCain wants to privatize Social Security,” as if that was a bad thing.

Later, on Wednesday night, Senator Biden expounded Senator Obama’s position on Social Security with stunning clarity and depth saying, “Barack Obama will … put the ‘security’ back in Social Security.”

I went to Obama’s website to see what Biden meant by that and found it meant a tax hike, and no mention of stopping the current practice of Congress to use social security like a slush fund.  It would be at least a step in the right direction to say that “Barack Obama will put the ‘trust’ back in Social Security Trust Fund and stop spending your money on pork barrel projects.”

Far from “Renewing America’s Promise” – Tuesday’s theme at the convention – this is repeating the mistakes of the past to continue to ignore the problem and conversely, the very simple steps that could be taken to give people choice and security.