Thread: NY Times: What Social Security Isn’t Meant to Do

What Social Security Isn’t Meant to Do
Editorial

comments (82)
Published: May 12, 2008

To hear some in Congress tell it, the federal government urgently needs to expand its electronic employment verification system, E-Verify, to all corners of the country and force every business to use it. But a hearing in the House last week raised serious questions about the costs and collateral damage of that expansion, the latest scheme by hard-liners to slam the door shut on unauthorized immigrant workers.

E-Verify is a voluntary program in which employers can check workers’ names against databases kept by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. About 61,000 employers have signed up. A bill by Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat, and Tom Tancredo, the Republican anti-immigration extremist from Colorado, would require each of the 7.4 million employers in the United States to participate in E-Verify — and to fire anyone, citizen or otherwise, who cannot prove that he or she has the right to work.

Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic representative from Connecticut and president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, warned at the hearing that forcing Social Security to take on the enormous burden of immigration enforcement would be a harmful diversion from its core mission and could strain the bureaucracy to the breaking point.

That would have frightening implications for millions of people who are supposed to be served by the Social Security Administration, particularly the elderly and those who are disabled. With Social Security struggling to provide existing services and the sunset of the baby boom approaching, Ms. Kennelly said, now is no time to pile on more responsibilities. The backlog of pending disability cases at the initial level is more than 500,000, and more than 750,000 people who have appealed rejected claims are awaiting decisions. As of February, the average wait on an appeal was more than 500 days.

Critics have noted other problems with the bill: the staggering costs to the federal budget — about $40 billion over 10 years, both from increased spending and falling tax revenue as workers are driven off the books — as well as the expense to businesses and the inconvenience and pain for workers caught by its flaws. Because the Social Security database is rotten with errors, the crackdown could force millions of Americans to battle a computerized bureaucracy that tells them, unjustly, that they cannot work. And the Government Accountability Office has cited evidence of employers abusing E-Verify, forcing workers who are tentatively flagged as unauthorized to take pay cuts or work longer hours until they can clear their names.

Supporters of Mr. Shuler’s and Mr. Tancredo’s hard-edged immigrant-deportation strategy have been pushing to get their bill to the floor. With any luck, testimony from experts like Ms. Kennelly will raise enough alarms to slow things down. If and when the government imposes a national employment verification scheme, it must be done with a serious commitment to fairness and accuracy, with ample protections for workers who fall into bureaucratic cracks, and for all who depend on the government to provide other critical services.

Such a system cannot be imposed without other immigration reforms, including a path to legalization for undocumented workers who would otherwise be pushed permanently into the shadows by a plan that gives them no way to work or to get right with the law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/opini ... ref=slogin

The libidiots and IA huggers at the New York Times get it wrong again as they desperately repeat their lies over and over hoping that you will eventually believe them. This brings to mind these quotes:

[b][i]“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and overâ€

Efficiency and Immigration
Assemblyman Michael Carroll
New Jersey Republican Assemblyman Michael Carroll, representing the 25th District, sounds off on the issues.

Today’s Times editorializes that the Social Security bureaucracy (you know, the same folks that the Left tells us administer Medicare for a minuscule fraction of what it costs the private sector to administer private health insurance plans) lacks the means to expand E-Verify to ensure that all employers in the county possess the ability to immediately check the employability of their workers. Immigration enforcement, the Times opines, would constitute a "harmful diversion" from the agency’s "core mission", thereby compromising the well-being of – of course, who else? – the poor, the elderly and the disabled.

The editorial points out a huge backlog in disability cases: 500,000 pending cases as well as three-quarters-of-a-million pending appeals and opposes imposing any additional responsibilities.

Apparently, these exemplars of governmental efficiency (1% administrative costs at Social Security, 2% at Medicare, according to The New Republic) are so incompetent that they can’t handle their present responsibilities in a timely fashion and, faced with the task of ensuring that people who are contributing to the system actually exist, would completely fall apart.

Oh, and there would be costs, too: $40 billion per annum, the Times avers, a combination of actual administrative costs "... and falling tax revenue as workers are driven off the books". Come again? About what group of "workers" does the Times speak? Presumably the only folks "driven off the books" would be illegals; if they’re paying a paltry $4 billion per annum in taxes, the sooner they go "off the books" – and home – the better for the taxpayers. In New Jersey alone, some estimates of governmental expenditures on illegal aliens run into the billions of dollars.

Or consider this gem:

"Because the Social Security database is rotten with errors, the crackdown could force millions of Americans to battle a computerized bureaucracy that tells them, unjustly, that they cannot work."

Hmm. The IRS seems to make do with the same information. But take the assertion at its face value: if this model of governmental efficiency presides over a data base "rotten with errors", are these the folks to whom we should be considering entrusting the entire national health care system?

Amusing, isn’t it? To a Leftist, Government is, at once, wholly incapable of policing the borders, checking employment status, or discerning who might properly register to vote. (Another Times editorial ... , er, news story, today reports on the baleful effects that keeping non-citizens out of the voting booth would have upon (yup, you guessed right again), the poor, the elderly, and minorities) and, yet, this same government is fully competent to handle the entire health care system. There would, of course, be no "battles with a computerized bureaucracy" when government takes over health care; everything would run smoothly and efficiently.

Indeed, per the Times, enforcing the law as it presently exists constitutes a grave error. The Gray Lady harumphs:

"Such a system cannot be imposed without other immigration reforms, including a path to legalization for undocumented workers who would otherwise be pushed permanently into the shadows by a plan that gives them no way to work or to get right with the law."

Illegal aliens always possess a simple way "to get right with the law": go home. A "path to legalization" already exists: go home and apply to come here legally.

As it happens, the Times is (partially) correct: government does nothing efficiently. The idea of entrusting the entire national health care system to the same folks who presided over the spectacularly successful Hurricane Katrina relief efforts ought to terrify any rational adult.

But while private folks can, and, do, easily attend to their own health care, they cannot police the borders. As bad and inefficient as government might be, no alternative exists to reliance upon it for law enforcement. The fact that some folks might have to wrestle with this "efficient" bureaucracy before they receive their taxpayer subsidies should not preclude using the best means possible to exclude those who don’t belong here.
http://www.michaelcarroll.com/2008/05/e ... ation.html

Howdy Zeezil, glad you're back.

Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic representative from Connecticut and president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, warned at the hearing that forcing Social Security to take on the enormous burden of immigration enforcement would be a harmful diversion from its core mission and could strain the bureaucracy to the breaking point.

My gosh, Ms. Kennelly. The rest of us Americans would like to know that our Social Security benefits are being properly calculated, and that our own payments aren't going into someone else's account. Americans are fairminded people---at least up until the Great Liberal dissimulation of the last twenty years. We don't want a chaotic system with accounting errors by the millions. BTW, how about bringing some of your tax dodging friends to justice if you are so concerned about problems in the Social Security system. Collecting those unpaid taxes would certainly help the funds deficits, y'know.