The New York Sun has a brilliant editorial that muses on the irony and disingenuousness of politicians who think nothing of aborting babies but supposedly worry about the future Social Security benefits of retirees who won't even be conceived for years.
"There would be at least a 28% benefit cut for a worker who is born five years from now, who retires at age 65, and who has average career earnings," the [Senator Chuck] Schumer [D-NY] press release warns. "There would be at least a 42% benefit cut for a worker who is born five years from now, who retires at age 65, and who has career earnings that are 'the equivalent' of $59,000 in 2005."Notice those key words "born five years from now." Senator Schumer, to judge by his votes in the Senate, doesn't buy into the idea that unborn children or fetuses or embryos, call them what you will, need to be protected against being harvested and destroyed for stem-cell research or being destroyed by their parents as a method of birth control. This same senator who opposes banning late-term abortions - in other words, who votes as if he doesn't believe an unborn child has a right to life - thinks that children who are four years away from even being conceived, let alone born, have some claim on Social Security benefits indexed to wages rather than prices.
Well said, and ingeniously connected. (HT: James Taranto.)