Something to keep in mind while you are watching tomorrow night’s debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan:

Back in 2001, then-President George Bush pushed through a package of “temporary” tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy. Joe Biden voted against the tax cuts. Paul Ryan voted in favor of them.

At the time, conservative pundits said the temporary tax cuts would generate 1.6 million new jobs by 2011 – and that would generate enough federal revenue to pay back the entire federal debt. (You can read the 2001 Heritage Foundation report here.)

Instead, the tax cuts contributed to record-setting federal deficits.

In 2003, President Bush pushed through a second package of “temporary” tax cuts, which again mostly benefited the wealthy. And again, Joe Biden voted “nay”; and Paul Ryan voted in favor.

A year later, the new jobs hadn’t materialized. “Supply-side economics” hadn’t cut the federal debt.

But that didn’t stop the tax-cutters. Instead, they pushed to have the “temporary” tax cuts made permanent. Here’s the Associated Press report from February 13, 2004:

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that Congress should make President Bush’s tax cuts permanent and cover the $1 trillion price by trimming future benefits in Social Security and other entitlement programs.

Social Security?!!?

During the Bush presidency, Social Security was “running a surplus.” More money was coming in through payroll taxes than was being paid out in retirement benefits. And the federal government borrowed every single penny of that surplus.

Today, the Social Security Trust Fund is the single largest creditor of the federal government. Over $2.7 trillion of the federal debt is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund. And that’s about the same amount as the 10-year cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5%.

That’s what you should keep in mind during tomorrow night’s debate: this election is coming down to a choice between tax cuts for the rich and financial security for the rest of us.

Social Security has stopped running a surplus, now that the Baby Boomers are retiring. Will the federal government honor its IOUs to working families? Or will the $2.7 trillion in federal debt get washed off the books by the proposed Romney-Ryan “reform” of Social Security?

Union members know what it’s like to see pension benefits vanish. It’s become all-too-common for corporations to use bankruptcy court to get “relief” from their pension obligations; American Airlines is just one example. More than 4,000 corporate pension programs are now in the trusteeship of the federal government. (You can download the list — representing more than 2 million American families! — here.)

Most of us have been paying into the Social Security system for decades. We don’t want to see our benefits disappear through a Romney-Ryan “reform” of the Social Security system. (One more reason why we don’t want to elect a President who will “manage” the federal government as if it were a corporation.)

Tax cuts for the wealthy didn’t create jobs in 2001.

More tax cuts didn’t create jobs in 2003.

Tax cuts in 2013 won’t create jobs, either – but they may cost us our Social Security benefits.

Please remember that, as you watch Joe Biden and Paul Ryan in the Vice Presidential debate tomorrow night at 9:00 pm.

Liz Iacobucci is the former Public Information Officer for the State Employees’ Association of New Hampshire, SEIU Local 1984. Over the past three decades, she has served in government at the federal, state and municipal levels; and she has worked for both Democratic and Republican politicians.

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