David Gregory's Social Security Nonsense

[alp227]

Corporate media coverage of budget deficits and debt often turns to blaming Social Security and Medicare for being the real problem. NBC's Meet the Press host David Gregory is especially fond of passing off such misleading claims as facts.

In a question to Republican Sen. John Thune, Gregory put it this way (7/31/11):
Senator, what's really ludicrous to the American people, even when the American people don't always speak with one voice on this matter, is that Washington is not really dealing with what really drives the debt, that's entitlement spending. It's been going on this way and was a ticking time bomb since the '60s, and Democrats--like you were saying, "Hey, we can't deal with Social Security and Medicare."

Republicans, you know, sign tax pledges, "I'm not going to raise taxes." Well, we can't deal with revenues. I mean, this is what's ludicrous to the American people. And even here, if we have a deal, we're going to solve a political problem but not the underlying fiscal problem, which is what creates our debt, senator, no?

(...)

ACTION: Tell NBC's David Gregory to stop misinforming viewers about the main causes of the federal deficit--and the solutions the public supports.

CONTACT:
David Gregory
NBC Meet the Press
202-885-4598


I also pointed out DG's talking point but in a question he directed towards the Democratic senator Claire McCaskill, not Thune.
full: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4371

[dkf]

1. It's the reason for future projected deficits, not past deficits.

[Doctor_J]

2. Gregory is a slimy turd whose main qualification for his job

is being Rove's buddy. A really, really despicable "person"

[tularetom]

3. Social security is like China only bigger

The SS trust fund is the biggest holder of US treasury bonds in the world. The whole fucking world. It is not the cause of a liquidity crisis in the government.

What should happen is that the trust fund should IMMEDIATELY be declared off limits to anymore borrowing by congress. Let them live within their means and stop counting on us to pull them out of the fire.

But don't count on gregory to know that. He just reads the script Comcast prepares for him.

[roxiejules]

4. We need to remind everyone....

that social security spending is “projected” 75 years in advance, and found to be “unsustainable”, while military spending isn’t even projected 5 years in advance.

Military spending is a whole lot less sustainable than social security or medicare are.

So why do you think nobody is looking at the sustainability of the latter, and everyone is looking at the former?

Right, because they are looking to find a stick to hit the dog with.

[66 dmhlt]

5. David "Raps-With-Rove" Gregory only shills GOP Talking Points

[Jefferson23]

6. Hack, he can lie that like and get away with it. Remember, "It's not our role."

Gregory vigorously praised the job which he and his "journalistic" colleagues did in the run-up to the Iraq War -- the period which Salon's Gary Kamiya called "one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media." Proclaimed Gregory, with a straight face: "Questions were asked. I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the President. Not only those of us in the White House Press Corps did that, but others in the media landscape did that." Most revealingly of all, Gregory said:


I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/12/29/gregory/

[Enthusiast]

7. I've heard him with his lies

about social security several times. That is one reason I refuse to watch any program he is on. His job is pure propaganda.