Posted on 02/24/2005 11:17:05 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA NY�Newly elected Democratic National Commitee Chair Howard Dean, speaking at a Cornell University rally Wednesday (February 23), admitted that social security faced �problems� if not reformed, contradicting the claims of many in his own party.
According to the Cornell Daily Sun, which covered the event locally, �Dean pointed out that�if Social Security were left alone for 30 years, its benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now. He acknowledged that� there were indeed problems with the program.�
The article also indicates that Dean also attacked the notion of many that social security was a �pension� for the middle class: � �[Social Security] was a response toward [overcoming] abject poverty...it is not meant as a retirement program...it was meant as a social safety net for people who had reached the end of their working careers and did not deserve, after a long lifetime of dignified work, to live in poverty,'" the paper quotes Dean as saying. "'It's not supposed to be a pension.� "
While Dean did not endorse President Bush�s call for privatization, his views still put him at odds with many of his fellow democrats, some of whom have actually accused the President of lying about the need to reform to social security.
For example, Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy recently accused President Bush of playing �the politics of fear� with social security.
Similarly, a number of the liberal blogs, a medium Dean himself helped pioneer as a campaign tool, accused the President of �crisis rhetoric� and "a deliberate distortion (read: lie) in an attempt to mislead the American public."
It is unknown whether Dean�s acknowledgement of the �problems� with social security will have any effect on the direction of his party. In fact, while the Cornell Sun indicated that social security issues were a major point in Dean�s speech, other papers, such as the Ithaca Journal and Syracuse Post Standard, did not even cover his comments on the issue, preferring to focus on Dean�s appeal to the �youth vote.�
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