Walter Patterson Herald ColumnistThe trouble with Democrats is that they have a tough time remembering what they said yesterday.
When Governor Rick Perry called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, the moaning and wailing and caterwauling could be heard from sea to shining sea.  If you didn’t know better, you might think that Governor Perry had coined the term Ponzi scheme while pulling on his cowboy boots at a dusty Texas hideout.  No one ever used this term before, and Perry had to pay the political price for making such an outrageous statement.
The truth is that the term “Ponzi scheme” dates back to 1967 when the Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson, a liberal Democrat economist, wrote, “Social Security can best be understood as an enduring and national Ponzi scheme.”   In 1987, another liberal economist, Ben Wattenberg, wrote in his book, The Birth Dearth, the following: “In short, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme, a chain letter.” In 1994, Democrat operative and head of the Cato Institute wrote, “…the offices of the Social Security Administration are home to the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.”
As long as America continued to have an increasing number of jobs and workers paying into Social Security, the national Ponzi scheme worked.  Money was rolling in from every direction.  In fact, there was so much money in the Social Security Trust Fund that Lyndon Johnson, who rivaled Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama as the worst president in the history of the country, decided that the trust fund money could be used to pay for every liberal program that he and his fellow Democrats could imagine.
At one time in its history, 12 workers paid the benefits of one Social Security recipient.  Today that number has shrunk to less than two workers. According to CNSNews, “That means that for each husband and wife who worked full-time in the private sector last year, there was a Social Security recipient somewhere in the country taking benefits from the federal government.”
Bernie Madoff, the New York investment banker who swindled thousands of people out of billions of dollars, would be proud.  Of course, Madoff is in jail serving a life term while our elected officials tell us what a wonderful job they did for the “little people.”  It’s enough to make any thinking person ill.
The unfortunate truth about Social Security is that it will not be available to our young workers who are just now entering the work force. It will be tweaked, adjusted, fought over, demagogued, but in the long run, there is no way that Social Security can be saved.  
The truth is that the Democrats know it, but they are going to ride that dying horse as long as he can stand.  Then reflexively, they will make a totally ridiculous assertion.  “It’s all Bush’s fault.” Of course, this excuse will fall on deaf ears because Social Security recipients know full well that liberalism and the lust to buy votes by Democrats have brought Social Security to the brink of bankruptcy.
Rick Perry made another interesting statement in one of his interviews that caused the Democrat left to hyper-ventilate.  He made the harmless statement that “evolution is just a theory.” He went further and stated that “man-made global warming is being questioned by scientists, and every day, new data supports the idea that global warming research was manipulated by some scientists for profit.”
The New York Times, a.k.a. the Old Grey Lady, went apoplectic.  Nothing is more fun that to watch liberals become unglued when one or more of their long-held theories is attacked.  True to form, the Times shot back with an article titled “Republicans Against Science.”  It is great entertainment if you get a chance to read it.
Rick Perry is right about one thing.  Unless we fix our economy, Social Security will die a natural death.  To sustain it, we must have workers paying into the system.  
After all, it is a Ponzi scheme.  The Democrats have said so.