Goodbye To Lyin' Annie Northup

Anne Northup is many things. Among them are: (1) a powerful Republican representative from Kentucky who was just defeated by John Yarmuth, and (2) a shameless liar.

I assume she lies about many things, but where I have direct experience is her lies about Social Security. Last year I was writing a lot here and for various publications about Bush's privatization plan. The first time I ever saw Northup was when she went on Hannity & Colmes and said this:

COLMES: So tell me, Congresswoman, how would he pay for the transition cost, something he hasn't addressed?

NORTHUP: Well, I think he has addressed many of these things, and we've talked about the fact that there's a $10 trillion unfunded liability. And when you reduce that significantly, and it costs $2 trillion to go through that transition, overall, you've reduced the overall liability debt of this country.

COLMES: I don't know what you -- where does the $2 trillion come from? It's going to cost $2 trillion for the transfer. Where does that money come from?

NORTHUP: Well, the fact is, you borrow it, but you reduce the $10 trillion liability.

Wow, that's a lot of lying.

The "transition cost" and "unfunded liability" of Social Security are completely separate issues. The transition cost refers to the money the government would have to borrow to set up a system of private accounts. But this would do nothing to reduce the system's unfunded liability. Only two things can do that: cutting benefits and/or raising taxes. You could spend money to set up a system of private accounts without reducing the unfunded liability. Likewise, you could eliminate the unfunded liability without a system of private accounts. One of the chief goals of the Bush administration was to confuse people into thinking these two things are the same, and Northup was doing her part here. (If you feel like hearing me rehash the mechanics of Social Security, just ask. Otherwise you can take my word for it.)

But that's not all! Northup's official position on Social Security was that "Any reforms should be accomplished without raising taxes, without raising the retirement age, and without reducing benefits." Again, if Social Security genuinely has the "$10 trillion unfunded liability" which Northup claimed, it's literally impossible to eliminate it without doing these things.

I was irritated by this, so I contacted Northup's office and (very politely) asked her press secretary Annie Reed to justify what she'd said. Reed said: no, no, Representative Northup really DOES have a plan to do this! Moreover, this plan is "is scored [by the Social Security Administration] to cost just over $1 trillion."

The plan to which she referred was the Ryan-Sununu bill. I looked it up, and sure enough it didn't raise taxes or cut benefits. Instead, according to the SSA's actuaries, IT BORROWED 8.5 TRILLION DOLLARS.

That's right: the Anne Northup scheme to handle this purported gigantic crisis was to borrow all the money to deal with it. For some perspective, $8.5 trillion is perhaps 80% 70% of the entire 2005 U.S. GDP. (Again, ask for details if you're curious.)

Now, that's (1) completely insane (which is why that particular plan never was taken seriously by anyone), and (2) not at all what Annie Reed claimed. So I first emailed her to direct me to the specific place in the SSA's scoring of Ryan-Sununu where it said it would "cost just over $1 trillion." No response. Concerned I'd misunderstood something, I then contacted the SSA Chief Actuary and doublechecked. No, he said, that plan would indeed cost $8.5 trillion. I forwarded the SSA email to Annie Reed. No response. I called four or five times and left messages. No response.

Meanwhile, Anne Northup kept making the same false claims in numerous media appearances.

Generally with these people it's hard to tell whether they're idiots or liars. But in the case of soon-to-be-ex-Rep. Northup and her staff, we can answer that question definitively: they're liars.