Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Baron Hill For Privatizing Social Security Before He Opposed It

U.S. Rep. Baron Hill is running the generic Democratic ad, just like Andre Carson ran in his special election race against Jon Elrod, attacking former U.S. Rep. Mike Sodrel for supporting the privatization of social security. A YouTube clip of Hill at a town hall meeting in 2004 makes clear that he likes the idea of privatizing social security, noting that he worked for Merrill Lynch before being elected to Congress. More importantly, the ad completely misrepresents Sodrel's position on the issue as Hoosier Pundit points out:

The ad repeats an old and discredited assertion that Mike Sodrel supports the the privatization of Social Security. An ad in 2006 claiming just this was so discredited and untrue that there were calls for it to be pulled from the air. The very Courier-Journal article cited in the ad as the source of Sodrel's position says that this is untrue. Back in 2006, I looked the article up. The text of it is available here.
Mike Sodrel does not support the privatization of Social Security.

Hill, like Carson, simply bandies this issue out there to scare senior citizens into voting for him. Democrats used to always scare seniors with ads suggesting that their Republican opponents supported cutting social security. After decades of the COLA kicking in on schedule, the Democrats had to turn to something new and the privatization label is the one they now try to pin on every Republican candidate whether it's true or not.

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