COLUMN: The cost of a vote

In what is clearly a last ditch effort by the Democrats to stave off an election day massacre at the polls, the administration has proposed the American taxpayers foot the bill for mailing out millions of $250 bribes – I mean “economic recovery payments” – to the voters on the Social Security rolls.

This proposal comes on the heels of an announcement by the Social Security Administration that there would be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the millions of Americans who rely on the entitlement checks to make ends meet. This year will mark the second year in a row that the COLA has been withheld.

The whole purpose of the COLA is to make sure income from Social Security keeps pace with inflation.

With the Federal Reserve poised to spark inflation with a new round of quantitative easing, the reality is that the checks seniors and other Social Security recipients receive today will buy considerably less over the next few months.

This was also true last year when the COLA was withheld, but there was no urgency to address the problem at that time since there was no looming election.

In fact, the House voted on a $250 supplemental payment this past March and at least a dozen Democrats sided with Republicans in defeating the measure. The measure failed because opponents in both parties felt it would be fiscally irresponsible.

What was fiscally irresponsible then has now been rebranded as a moral imperative by the administration. We still have no money to pay for it, but that does not seem to matter. President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have not really even bothered to explain how they plan to pay for this vote buying scheme.

We currently have a $13 trillion federal debt. Granted, $14.5 billion is a drop in the bucket when you are talking about numbers that big, but it is beyond reckless to even contemplate adding to the debt at this point.

Social Security recipients understand that even if the Democrats do not. There have not been a lot of complaints so far about the lack of a COLA – possibly because Social Security recipients realize millions of people are in the same boat.

There are millions of working Americans who have not received a pay increase in the past couple of years. There are millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and taken lower paying jobs just to keep food on the table. There are millions of Americans who remain unemployed despite promises from the administration that the worst is over and happy days are here again.

Where are the “economic stimulus payments” for these individuals? Perhaps the reluctance to allocate billions of dollars to these other groups stems from the fact that they are not going to be as much help to the Democrats in November as those 65 and older.

In 2008, more than 72 percent of registered voters between the ages of 65 and 74 went to the polls. This is an age group the Democrats can ill-afford to lose, so they are pulling out all the stops. If 2010 looks bad for the Democrats, 2012 looks even worse. This election may be the administration’s only chance of getting enough Democrats in office to push through what remains of the President’s agenda.

President Obama has had two years to make his case to the American people. He has failed. Sure, the American people are probably just not able to “think clearly” because we are so “scared,” but maybe the voting public is smarter than the President thinks. If the President does not understand why his “facts and science and argument” are not winning the day, maybe he should come down out of his ivory tower and look at the same facts the rest of Americans face on a daily basis.

Pandering to seniors may seem like a good idea to a bunch of desperate politicians, but it appears the voters are too smart to take this bribe. The Democrats just cannot buy their way out of this mess.

Kristi Reed is a reporter for the Barrow Journal. She can be reached at kreed@barrowjournal.com.