Harry Reid: "Leave Social Security alone."
What does Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid think we should do about Social Security? More or less what this one-hit YouTube star thinks we should do about Britney Spears: Leave it alone! Reid doesn't quite come out and ask how anyone dar criticize Social Security after all its been through, but he it's roughly the same idea.
Somewhat disappointingly, Reid's defense of the program does not arrive in the form of a tearful YouTube rant. The Hill reports:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emphatically rejected changes to Social Security that would improve the entitlement program's solvency, jesting that he'd be willing to revisit the program's structure in two decades, once it's projected to become insolvent.
"Two decades from now, I'm willing to take a look at it," said Reid, 71, in an interview to air Wednesday evening on MSNBC. "But I'm not willing to take a look at it right now."
…"So what I've said, if we want to look at something to take care of the out years, let's do it at the right time," he said. "It is not in crisis at this stage. Leave Social Security alone."
Good plan! Sure, Social Security faces $15 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities, but why bother trying to prevent a crisis before it happens? It's so much easier to just wait until an actual crisis hits before taking any action. Besides, there's no sense in wasting a crisis—even if you had an opportunity to avert it beforehand.
Sen. Reid isn't the only leading Democratic to shrug at the Social Security crisis: Between the Clinton presidency and Obama's, White House budget director Jacob Lew went from explaining the Social Security trust fund scam to denying it.
