The public itself seems split, or perhaps confused. Americans overwhelmingly say that in general, they prefer cutting government spending to paying higher taxes, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published last week. Yet their preference for spending cuts, even in programs that benefit them, dissolves when they are presented with specific options related to Medicare and Social Security, the programs that directly touch millions of lives and are the biggest drivers of the long-term deficit.

Social Security is not a big 'driver of the long-term deficit,' especially when compared with Medicare, which is a far more serious concern.

More to the point: In the poll cited (which was reported by the Times last week), the public was asked about cuts to Social Security, Medicare or the military. Opposition to cutting spending did not "dissolve"; the public picked cuts to the military by, as the Times put it, "a large margin."

If the public is indeed "confused" by anything, it could be the fact that, in the debate over cutting government spending, their preferred option-- cutting the miltary budget-- finds little support in official Washington, and is mostly ignored by a media more focused on the apparent necessity of cutting Social Security.

The article, headlined "Support Grows for Tackling Nation's Debt" (12/31/09), was a product of the Fiscal Times, described in an accompanying note as "an independent digital news publication reporting on fiscal, budgetary, healthcare and international economics issues." More accurately, it's a propaganda outlet created and funded by Peter G. Peterson, a Wall Street billionaire and Nixon administration cabinet member who has long used his wealth to promote cuts in Social Security and other entitlement programs.

That Post's Fiscal Times piece was the subject of intense criticism, which the Post's ombud eventually addressed. As FAIR summed it up (1/13/10), ombud Andrew Alexander criticized the paper for a "glaring lack of transparency with its readers" by not disclosing the Fiscal Times' connection to Peterson and his interest in the issues it covers. Alexander added that the piece "was not sufficiently balanced," and that publishing a story so closely aligned with the agenda of the funder of the project  "was inviting suspicion about its motives."

Yesterday  the Post was at it again (6/20/10), publishing another Fiscal Times piece extolling work that Peterson is closely aligned with. Under the headline "Labor Leader, Chief Executive Team Up to Reduce the U.S. Deficit," Post readers are treated to a soft profile of two members (an "unlikely duo") of the White House's deficit reduction commission. Did the piece entertain serious criticism of the ideas being advanced so far by the commission (cutting Social Security, most notably)? Hardly--here's about as close as they got:

A debate is raging in Congress and among economists about whether this is the right time to start reducing deficits. Many liberal groups worried about high unemployment argue that the economy is still so weak that the government should keep spending and deficits high to prevent a double-dip recession. But lawmakers in both parties are balking at new stimulus spending, and some economists argue that the deficit needs to be reined in sooner rather than later.

What about disclosure, then? The Post offered a note at the top of the piece, mentioning that the reporters "work for the Fiscal Times, an independent news organization that specializes in fiscal and economic matters. It is funded by Peter G. Peterson, who separately supports groups that advocate for long-term debt reduction."

Ah, I get it.  Peterson has spent many millions of dollars warning about Social Security's threat to the nation's finances. But the news outlet he organized and bankrolls to make these arguments in journalistic form is separate from his long-standing political interest in these topics. Huh.

In truth, none of the cuts in annual appropriations will significantly reduce the long-term deficit projections. Those are driven mostly by escalating costs for the benefit programs that liberals most aggressively protect--Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security--and by insufficient tax revenues to support them.

As has been noted many times, Social Security has amassed a surplus of over $2 trillion; that plus the expected revenue from Social Security taxes will keep the program solid for the next 25 years. Medicare is in much worse shape; why the two should be talked about together as if they are comparable drains on the federal government is unclear, unless one wants to associate Social Security with Medicare's more severe problems.

For an illustration of the difference, see this graph from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities:

The Washington Post's Lori Montgomery, meanwhile, goes after Social Security's "defenders" today (6/9/10), who have given a "sinister cast" to the White House's deficit commission, accusing it of having "a secret plan to gut Social Security." Social Security advocates are using "heated rhetoric" and are "threatening to rally the public against" benefit cuts, which is seen as an "ominous sign"  for the commission.

Of that group, Montgomery writes, "Adjusting Social Security benefits is a likely point of consensus, commission members say."  By "adjusting," she presumably means "cutting" in some form. So it's "ominous" that Social Security's "defenders" are pointing out this reality about the deficit commission.

Like the Times piece cited above, the Post portrays the issue as simple mathematics: "Budget experts say it would be difficult to significantly reduce future deficits without addressing the rising cost of Social Security."

The Post lays out the argument in favor of Social Security's viability:

The program's defenders argue that there is no crisis: If Treasury would repay billions of dollars in surplus Social Security taxes borrowed over the years, the program could pay full benefits through 2037. But many budget experts question whether supporting the existing benefit structure should be a cash-strapped nation's first priority.

So "experts" are on the side of the Post, while "defenders" are out to protect the status quo. As if to reiterate that point, the next graph quotes an analyst at the Heritage Foundation about the "intellectual consensus" on his side.  As Dean Baker notes at Beat the Press, this is in effect saying that the government should default on the portion of its debt held by the Social Security trust fund. That would be a rather radical idea--misappropriating trillions of dollars collected from working people that were to supposed to go to support the retired elderly, and instead using them to keep down tax rates for the wealthy--but one can count on outlets like the Post to portray it as a necessary solution offered up by the "experts."

Have you ever wondered why we even have Social Security? It's not an American idea. It's first from Germany in the late 1800s. Hmmm, lets see, who else was prominent in Germany at that time...Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche. This is where the first progressive ideas came from, and when those ideas floated across the Atlantic, they took America off course.... The progressive wave of European social insurance infected America and this is the result of it. This is European thinking, not American.

Now, factchecking Glenn Beck is a bit like telling Jackson Pollack to color within the lines, but it's worth pointing out, as Matthew Yglesias (4/8/10) noted, that Nietzsche was not only not a progressive, he actually comes across as someone who today might be a Glenn Beck fan:

Socialism is the fanciful younger brother of the almost expired despotism whose heir it wants to be; its endeavors are thus in the profoundest sense reactionary. For it desires an abundance of state power such as only despotism has ever had; indeed it outbids all the despotisms of the past inasmuch as it expressly aspires to the annihilation of the individual, who appears to it like an unauthorized luxury of nature destined to be improved into a useful organ of the community.

But more interesting than Beck's forays into 19th century German philosophy are his attempts to whip up some resentment among his audience toward high-living grandmothers:

When FDR signed that Social Security bill, it wasn't designed to subsidize a cushy retirement, so seniors could jet set all across the globe on vacations. Social Security was meant as insurance....  In1930 life expectancy was only 58 for men and 62 for women, and the retirement age was 65! You weren't even expected to ever get the benefits. Today life expectancy is 75 years for men, 80 years for women, and too many people rely and count on Social Security funding their weekly shuffleboard tournaments. You should have saved!

The odd thing about this is that Beck's audience, as with cable news in general, is pretty old--in a typical recent week, roughly 72 percent of his audience was 54 or older (assuming he doesn't have a lot of under-18 fans).  You have to wonder--how do they feel being painted as a bunch of freeloaders, currently or in the near future?

Beck may be falling into the trap of assuming that his followers have the same ideology that he does. He may oppose government social programs in general because he thinks such programs aren't "American"--but there's a large number of white Americans who oppose welfare programs because they are perceived as mainly benefiting black people, at the same time that they support social insurance programs like Social Security because they are seen as helping white people. One suspects that such people make up a significant percentage of Beck's biggest fans.