Tea Party Leader Dick Armey: Social Security Is A Corrupt ?Ponzi Scheme?
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 21st, 2010 4:37 am by HL
Tea Party Leader Dick Armey: Social Security Is A Corrupt ?Ponzi Scheme?
This past weekend, conservative activists and Tea Party groups gathered in Chicago for the Right Nation 2010 convention. Among those who attended was former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the chairman of one of the original Tea Party groups, FreedomWorks.
During the event, ThinkProgress sat down with Armey at a blogger’s roundtable. No sooner than we took our seats did Armey come out guns-blazing against Social Security. He called it a “corrupt government practice” that steals people’s money “under false pretenses.” He went on to call Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”:
ARMEY: The government uses the concept of a trust fund to take your money under false pretenses. For years, I wrote about and talked about and taught about what I call ‘corrupt government practices,’ because they’re always so quick to talk about corruption. One of the corrupt government practices is stealing your money under false pretenses. I’ll give you a to wit: social security. When they had the Alan Greenspan commission, they knowingly raised payroll taxes more than what was necessary to meet the flow of output. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme. They knew very well that the extra $250 billion would be spent on their social schemes.
Watch here:
Though Tea Party candidates continue to flail on whether or not they would like to privatize Social Security, Tea Party groups like FreedomWorks mince no words about what their plan is for the hugely-successful social safety net. In a Politico interview, Armey said that if he could do one thing as president of the United States, he would make “all government programs…voluntary.” However, the American public remains adamantly opposed to this plan, with two of every three Americans uncomfortable with the idea of privatizing Social Security.
At WorldNetDaily’s Take Back America 2010 conference in Miami this weekend, ThinkProgress spoke to William Murray, the chairman of a group organizing protests against the proposed Park51 community center in lower Manhattan. Murray recently ran an advertisement against building mosques in America.
During our interview, Murray noted that Frank Gaffney, a well-funded anti-Muslim activist, actually provided Newt Gingrich with the idea for Republicans to ban sharia law in the United States. Asked why some Republican leaders, like Mitt Romney, have been relatively quiet on his crusade against Park51, Murray suggested that Romney might reveal “similarities between Islam and Mormonism” if he became vocal. He added that such a connection would be “false logic”:
MURRAY: I don’t know with the case with Mitt Romney. It could be because of some similarities between Islam and Mormonism, to be very frank with you, and his fear that any criticism of Islam, that those arguments could then be construed or used against Mormonism. I think that is some false logic. Also there is the issue of Mitt Romney being purely an economic conservative, not a social conservative.
Watch it:
Murray echoed his broadside against “economic conservatives” in his remarks to the WND audience. At one point, he attacked Grover Norquist for opposing the recent right-wing effort to demagogue against Muslims. Murray even assailed Norquist for supporting gay conservatives and for “marrying a Muslim woman.” Listen here:
Murray, who meets regularly with Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) through the “Values Action Team” caucuses in Congress and maintains his own influential political action committee, has long opposed the libertarian wing of the conservative movement. Murray’s ally Frank Gaffney staged a high profile attempt to purge Norquist from the movement several years ago.
Later during the interview, Murray noted that openly criticizing Islam was difficult during the Bush-era because Bush had said Islam is a “religion of peace.” With Bush choosing to remain silent on the issue, Murray and his cohorts are on the rise within the conservative movement.
