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Center for American Progress’s silly Social Security sequester small-ball.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  February 24th, 2013 at 03:06 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

With sequester coming in less than a week, there’s a certain amount of sudden nervousness about it… among the DC/Beltway demographic (it’s never a real crisis until it affects the Imperial District, you see). So you can expect to see a few rhetorical Hail Mary plays being thrown, in the hope that one of them will resonate with the voting public… but, still. Is this really the best that the rabidly liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) could have done to scaremonger on the sequester?

REALLY?

The administration’s long reluctance to spell out the gruesome details “doesn’t entirely make sense to me,” said Scott Lilly, a budget expert at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank. “I think Social Security will have to close a lot of offices. And the ones that make sense to close are the ones in the smallest communities. Which, by the way, happen to be predominantly Republican.”

While Social Security benefits are protected, Lilly said, “the White House would be advantaged to let people know that they’re going to have to drive 40 miles to put in their application or get information about their benefits.”

Bolding mine. Now, never mind that only an urban liberal who possibly doesn’t even own a car would think that ‘drive 40 miles’ is as much a pronouncement of DOOM as Scott Lilly apparently thinks that it is; it’s also kind of entertaining that Mr. Lilly apparently has never heard of this marvelous new thing called the “Internet.” You see, when it comes to Social Security, you can use the “Internet” to, say, put in an application:

Social Security offers an online retirement application that you can complete in as little as 15 minutes. It’s so easy. Better yet, you can apply from the comfort of your home or office at a time most convenient for you. There’s no need to drive to a local Social Security office or wait for an appointment with a Social Security representative.

In most cases, once your application is submitted electronically, you’re done. There are no forms to sign and usually no documentation is required. Social Security will process your application and contact you if any further information is needed.

…or get information about benefits:

The Benefit Eligibility Screening Tool (BEST) helps you find out if you could get benefits that Social Security administers. Based on your answers to questions, this tool will list benefits for which you might be eligible and tell you more information about how to qualify and apply.

This should not be surprising, mind you: anyone with at least an average intelligence and a layman’s grasp of the way things are done in the modern world would have immediately grasped that government agencies would jump at the chance to put this information online. Filling out forms online can reduce the amount of time that people spend cooling their heels waiting in line at an office; and nobody actually wants those people to be wasting their time like that. But then, I said ‘average intelligence’ and ‘layman’s grasp;’ which generally excludes the typical worker drone at the Center for American Progress.

The sequester may or may not end up being as big a deal – or as small as one – as people expect. But groups like CAP need to up their demagogic game.

(H/T: Instapundit)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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  • ss396

    Mr. Lilly must have also missed the recent stories about how Social Security (and every other benefits agency) is going to put everyone on electronic payments by March 01; that they will no longer be writing & mailing checks.

  • MoeLane

    To be fair; I missed that, too. :)

  • westcoastpatriette

    But, the sky is falling, Moe. Really, it is.

  • carolina

    The govt is ALWAYS at least 10 – 15 years behind the private sector. There is a huge opportunity for productivity improvements throughout all of the govt. Since the govt is a monopoly, they don’t have to compete and ‘keep up’.
    Maybe applying a few fiscal thumbscrews will encourage them to work a little smarter. (I can dream)

  • Samsara

    Like so many things in DC, sequester has nothing to do with reality. It was a made up solution to a manufactured crisis. It doesn’t even dent the debt.

    But that doesn’t mean it cant be used as a political weapon, and Republicans are awakening to to fact that they are staring down the business end of a double barreled mess. They are going to take a beating from both the Soccer Moms and the Military Industrial Complex.

    So much hinged on a Romney victory. This is just another aftereffect.

  • Notre Droite

    The fear-mongering by the Obama administration is shameless. I had one liberal try to explain that things like SS federal offices were important because many seniors that receive SS don’t have transportation and can’t use a computer. Seriously, it’s 2013. To liberals it’s acceptable to bankrupt the country because a handful of seniors may not be able to figure out how to fill out forms online. Ridiculous.

  • drfredc

    Seems like one option for spending cuts ought to be to pass an anti-pork bill allowing the President to impound funds on any pork added to bills — kind of a line item pork veto.

  • Next93

    Personally, I’m not at all convinced that the sequester is necessarily a Bad Thing. We had a state shutdown last year in Minnesota for almost a month, and despite repeated warnings that the sky was falling, nobody really noticed.

    It was resolved only when it was discovered that the beer supply was in danger; apparently with the state shut down, the distributors couldn’t renew their licenses, and therefore couldn’t deliver the cold, refreshing goods to the retailers (and, no, I’m NOT making this up).

    That was actually typical of most businesses; the whole exercise revealed that the only thing the state provides to the majority of the citizenry is the ability to pay licencing, taxes, and fees that state itself has imposed. I think that Governor Crazypants finally conceded to a budget because he was afraid that this would become obvious to the the idiots who habitually vote Democrat.

    Even with the revenue-collecting parts of the government
    “going dark”, and with benefits continuing to go out, the state actually
    saved about $5 million as a result of the shut down, though I think that
    was before the unions sued for back-pay (gee, a state worker paid for
    time he/she spent not working – “why is this night different from all
    others?”).

    We all know that if the sequester happens, the bureaucrats will try to make the cuts as painful as possible; we’ve seen this form of blackmail time and again in Minnesota when the former (Republican) governor reduced state aid to local governments. We were told that the layoffs would effect cops, firemen, and teachers, but at the same time, the local ward-heelers were spending money on light-rail projects and a “green roof” for the Minneapolis city hall (no, I’m not making that up, either). It’s in any government agency’s best interest to make themselves appear to be indispensable, so they’ll make any cutting as painful to the taxpayer as possible, whether the cuts are caused by sequestration or the mythical “smart cutting” that the Collectivist-In-Chief give lip-service to but has proven himself incapable of implementing.

    Do I care about the effect on the economy? No. All of the threatened job losses that will result from the sequester appear to be Federal Government jobs. Given the fact that federal payrolls and federal pay have steadily gone up during the recession, I don’t have a problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with the impact on the local economies; the districts that will be hit the hardest are ones that have been thriving off of the Federal teat throughout the recession; it’s about time they learned the meaning of the “shared sacrifice” that the man they voted back into office speaks of so fondly.

    Nor am I concerned about the effect on National Security. I believe that the Pentagon can absorb the cuts, and that the professionalism of our officer corps (even those contaminated by close contact with DC and the military-industrial complex) will ensure that the cuts will be, for the most part, in fat that needed to be trimmed in the first place.

    At the end of the day, my biggest problem with the whole sequester is that, frankly, it’s not big enough. As I understand it, my family’s share of the debt (unfunded liabilities and deficit) at current levels is over $1 Million; at my income and tax level, it’s going to take me about 50 years to pay that, at which point I’ll be over 100 years old.

  • Next93

    About 20 years ago, after having spent a decade as an engineer in the private sector, I was hired by a Federal agency, one that is a symbol of American technological power worldwide. I managed to last 50 weeks before I gave my 2-week notice, closing out my government career after 366 days.

    Professionally speaking, it felt like I had fallen into a time warp. There’s an episode of the original Star Trek series where Spock complains that he’s being asked to build a computer “using stone knives and bear skins”; he should have considered himself lucky – if he was working for the Feds, he would have been doing the same thing, but he would have had to spend 6 months filing paperwork proving that bear skin didn’t come from an endangered species, and another 6 months to get the environmental impact statement to chip the stone knife.

    One of the tenets of Government Management is that “it’s always easier to get budget to do the same thing you did last year than it is to get budget to do something new”. To an engineer, this means you use equipment till it’s worn out, then you keep repairing it and use it till it’s physically dangerous to use. Then you replace it with the same model, spending twice what it originally cost because you’re now buying a antique.