Maybe Rick Perry didn't do his homework. Or maybe he was trying to score "catch phrase" points when, during one of the countless recent debates among Republican presidential candidates, he called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme."
Perhaps he should have added the phrase, "not intended to be a factual statement."
This isn't a partisan rant. It's just an effort to set the record straight.
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, granting monthly support payments to those 65 and older, the life expectancy for those born that year was less than 62 years. While those who made it to 65 could expect to live another 12 years or so, barely more than half the males and just 60 percent of the females reached retirement age due to accidents, illnesses or other causes of death.
Social Security is running out of money because life expectancies have lengthened - and population surges such as the Baby Boom are aging into the system, even as the number of people paying into Social Security is shrinking due to declines in the size of families. There simply aren't enough people paying into FICA to offset what's going out to those already retired...or who will be within the next few years.
A Ponzi scheme is intentional fraud, an elaborate shell game designed to dupe investors. Social Security became a victim of several factors that converged into a costly conundrum.
Are reforms necessary? Without question. But to stain the program with a label associated with a criminal enterprise is either ineptitude in action or intellectual dishonesty on display.
Neither is acceptable - particularly from someone who wants to be president.
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