An interview with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) During the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte last week, I got the opportunity to join with my brother David Atkins, who writes at Digby's Hullabaloo, in interviewing Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. The Democrat from Rhode Island, who has put a special priority on defending earned benefits, talked with us about defending Social Security and Medicare, filibuster reform and how the Senate will handle the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

David Atkins: At Hullabaloo, we've been covering a lot the of Simpson-Bowles issue and what's going on with Social Security. Clinton gave a speech last night and the only part that didn't resonate with the audience was that whole discussion of cuts to Medicare and Social Security. There's a lot of fear out there'obviously, a lot of people are paying attention to the election, but a lot of us are looking ahead of the election. Assuming Obama wins, which is a big assumption, but even if he doesn't, what happens during the lame duck session? There's a lot of fear that that would be used to sort of ram through unnecessary cuts to Social Security on the Simpson-Bowles template, and I was wondering what your plans were, and are we going to fight back on this? What is going to happen?

Sen. Whitehouse: I think that as a very general expression of a bipartisan and compromising way to deal with the debt and deficit problem that we have in this country, the Simpson-Bowles outline represents a pretty fair starting point. It has a fatal flaw in my estimation which that it rolls Social Security into the equation. Social Security has a $2 trillion surplus. It contributes virtually not at all to our national debt and deficit. It has long been kind of a bogeyman to the Republican Party that we have Social Security. They want to get rid of it, they want to privatize it, they never liked it. We cannot use this debt and deficit discussion as an excuse or vehicle to go after Social Security which is a separate discussion. It's sound until 2027, I think, at this point. It has got a huge surplus, and we need to make sure there is airspace between our debt and deficit discussion and Social Security. That's one of the reasons I helped found the Defending Social Security Caucus, and one of the things I think has happened in the Senate, not invisibly perhaps as it might have, but visibly to those of us who are there, setting Simpson-Bowles aside, the discussion about using Social Security to solve the deficit, has really gone away. And I think in part it's because I believe we're up to 30 senators who have signed on and said, "No way. No way. Not going to happen." And we make a blocking minority that makes that very difficult for the White House. They've backed off, everybody has backed off. And I think that's an important line. We have a success so far. But when you look at $2 trillion that Wall Street would love to get its hands on, and privatizing Social Security that Wall Street would love to do, this is a fight that's not going to go away. We're in a good position on it now, we should not give in, and we need to be alert really for the rest of our lives to protect against those efforts to encroach on it.

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