No one can argue that Social Security has troubles. But the attack on Social Security mirrors that of another shady Republican Administration (and it�s successor), one that saw the dawn of the modern neocon.
Nixon hated a legacy item of LBJ�s Great Society, the Office of Equal Opportunity.
Via ProgressiveTrail:
No one disliked the program more than then-President Richard Nixon, who saw the whole apparatus as a government way to fund the left. Upon his election, Nixon appointed Rumsfeld to direct the OEO. Rumsfeld, in turn, hired Dick Cheney. It was at OEO that they worked together for the first time. They were joined by another future Cabinet secretary: Christine Todd Whitman, whose influential Republican connections won her first government post at OEO.
According to a 2001 New Yorker article, what impressed Rumsfeld most about the young Dick Cheney was the job he'd been doing for a group of congressman, including George H.W. Bush, who were developing legislation to cut off federal funding to troublesome universities. Cheney sat in on campus meetings and gathered information on faculty involvement in anti-war protests and their relationship to groups like Students for a Democratic Society. At OEO, Rumsfeld and Cheney embraced as their mission not to direct the office, but to discredit its programs and ultimately to dismantle the agency. From a federal funding service, they turned OEO into a tool of federal surveillance. Federally funded community groups found themselves investigated for alleged misuse of public money and accused of subversive activities. By 1972, the OEO was near death (it was disbanded officially under President Ford) and government-funded community action had became one of the red-hot, hot-button undesirables of LBJ's Great Society. The legacy persists, echoing through every bitter debate over Congressional appropriations for grassroots projects from public broadcasting to the NEA.
Fast forward, after Nixon�s downfall, to the argument over FOIA. LBJ had reluctantly signed the Freedom of Information Act, but that was structured to make it extremely difficult to use. It was slow, expensive, and basically encouraged government agencies to ignore it. Congress set out to fix FOIA, which President Ford greatly opposed (which is curious, in light of this occurring post-Watergate). A primary abuse of the administration was to stamp everything classified, claiming that the release of items were threats to national security. Congressional legislation was drafted in both Houses to fix these problems, as the administration and several Federal Agencies, like the Department of Justice and the CIA prepared their opposition. Through Congressional wrangling, the exemptions that are in place today, like current law enforcement documents being exempted as well as items related to national security properly classified Top Secret by Executive Order, were inserted into compromise legislation. Even more interesting is the fact that these compromises came from Nixon�s desire to work with Congress on this issue as opposed to vetoing it.
The charge against FOIA was led by Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Cheney, and the head of the Justice Department�s Office of Legal Counsel, Anton Scalia. Scalia personally lobbied members of the CIA to contact a White House staffer to voice their opposition. At the same time, Rumsfeld became concerned about leaks.
Ford vetoed the FOIA bill, which Congress subsequently overrode. Needless to say, it was not well received by the press or the public.
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