Controversy over a nominee for a position as trustee for Social Security and Medicare found its way to the Senate floor Tuesday, the day before the trustees are scheduled to release their annual report on the state of the entitlement programs, as Sen. Orrin Hatch called Democrats “shameful” for opposing the candidate.
Hatch, the chairman of the Finance Committee, criticized Democrats Charles Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse for campaigning against the confirmation of Charles Blahous for another term as trustee and portraying him as a stooge of the Koch brothers and a threat to Social Security. Blahous, an Obama appointee, would be the required non-Democrat public trustee, a position for which confirmation is generally not contested.
In a speech on the Senate floor, the Utah Republican called the Democrats’ efforts “100 percent political, designed to serve as a proxy for what political operatives hope will be an epic campaign battle over Social Security.”
Hatch took particular exception to the Democrats’ accusation, laid out in a Huffington Post op-ed, that Blahous had managed to sway past years’ reports toward conclusions that favor cutting Social Security benefits.
To do so, Hatch noted, Blahous would have had to slip his conclusions past the other trustees, including Obama Cabinet members such as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Labor Secretary Tom Perez.
Escalating the confrontation, Hatch sent letters to the Obama administration asking if it willingly signed off on faulty assumptions in the annual reports.
The Social Security and Medicare trustees are tasked with ensuring the security of the trust funds for those programs, a relatively limited and analytical role.
The reports are scheduled to be released Wednesday.
Last year, the trustees reported that the Social Security trust funds were on track to face exhaustion by 2034 and that the Medicare hospital trust fund would be depleted by 2030.
