If it's September, time for Obama to lie about Social Security

Every September, Democrats around the United States pause to scare Seniors by lying about nefarious "plots" to take away their Social Security.

This year, Obama decided to use last week's market turmoil to frighten the poor seniors in Florida half to death.

The Obama ad is SO OUTRAGEOUS that even factcheck.org, which is owned by the Annaburg foundation, the foundation he is closely associated with and run by his friends, had to call him on it.

From Factcheck.org, harsh words for the candidate who promised he would run a clean, positive campaign, in their article "Scaring Seniors":

An Obama-Biden ad says McCain supports "cutting benefits in half" for Social Security recipients. False!

That's not "Misleading", that's "Lie".

A new Obama ad characterizes the "Bush-McCain privatization plan" as "cutting Social Security Benefits in half." This is a falsehood sure to frighten seniors who rely on their Social Security checks. In truth, McCain does not propose to cut those checks at all.

Remember, on Friday Obama said that in these difficult times, we shouldn't be playing politics, or scaring people with our economic plans.

But now we find out that Obama is quietly running these ads, using the current turmoil to scare our parents, grandparents, and others, by lying about what McCain has supported, and will do as President.

I say "quietly" because apparently Obama's campaign didn't announce these ads. Normally, the campaign makes a big deal about ads. It's clear they knew these ads were false, and they wanted to keep their "distance". As FactCheck says:

The Obama campaign made no announcement of this ad and won't say where they intend to run it. It was first aired on a station in Flint, Mich. on Sept. 16, where it was recorded by the Campaign Media Analysis Group of TNSI Media Intelligence. According to CMAG, the ad has been running in Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Factcheck had to get a recording of the ad. I don't know if that means it isn't on YouTube. If it was NOT put out on YouTube by the campaign, that would be further evidence that the campaign was trying to hide the ad for as long as possible, to take maximum advantage of last week's stock market turmoil to scare seniors, McCain's best voter group, into voting for Obama instead.

Here are the MANY DIFFERENT WAYS that Obama's secret ad lies:

The three votes featured in the ad are from 1998 and 2006. ... None would have actually resulted in changing Social Security without additional, specific legislation.
...
The ad implies that Bush's plan bets the whole lot of Social Security funds on unstable stocks. In fact, it would have "privatized" only a small portion of Social Security taxes that Americans could have invested in private accounts, if they chose to do so.
...
The ad goes on to claim that the Bush (and McCain) plan would cut "benefits in half." This is a rank misrepresentation: Nobody now getting benefits, or even close to retirement, would have seen any reduction in benefits or cost-of-living adjustments under the plan Bush proposed in April, 2005.

Factcheck also explains that only future higher-income workers would see a reduction in benefits from the current unpayable projections. Low-income people would not have a reduction. And that reduction doesn't include the extra money from the private accounts.

Factcheck then examines the "cut in half", and shows that it's based on a false premise from one of Obama's MANY economic advisors:

The Obama-Biden campaign attempts to document their "cutting benefits in half" claim by citing a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities written by Jason Furman, who is currently one of Obama's top economic advisers. This won't do.

What Furman's study actually says is quite different from what the ad claims. Furman's report says that the "progressive price indexing" plan Bush supported would result in benefits for the average worker who retires in 2075 that are 28 percent lower than under the current formula. Obviously 28 percent is not "half."

The Obama-Biden campaign notes that Furman's paper also says that full price indexing of benefits – even for low-income workers – would result in benefits 49 percent lower than the current formula in 2075. But that's not the plan Bush supported, and we find no evidence that McCain ever supported it either. We asked the Obama campaign to show us where McCain has ever supported full price indexing of benefits, but so far they have not done so.

Note that they don't even raise the objection of a campaign citing the statement of their own campaign worker as "proof", just that they couldn't even get that right. Now, think about that -- what kind of economic advisor would allow a campaign to misuse his own supposedly scholarly work? Is that the kind of economic advisor we need right now, when our system is teetering precisely because economic advisors allowed the decisionmakers to misuse their scholarly work?

Factcheck closes with an admission that while McCain is TRYING to fix Social Security, Obama is making it harder by playing politics:

The system isn't exactly "going broke." But the latest official projection is that the trust fund will be exhausted by the year 2041, after which current tax rates will finance only 78 percent of currently scheduled benefits. We agree that "straight talk" is needed and that finding solutions will be hard. Ads like this, however, misinform the public and make the job of fixing the system more difficult.