Today's New York Senate Debate - Gillibrand vs. DioGuardi

I watched today's Senate debate between Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and her challenger Joe DioGuardi. The debate streamed live on WABC-TV's website, and will air on television on Sunday. However, the WABC report featuring some clips from the debate is now on their website.

While I wrote a of the debate summary over Daily Kos two things said Joe DioGuardi stuck out the most to me:

1. He called Social Security the "biggest Ponzi scheme in the world" and saying that even Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme doesn't come close to comparing to Social Security
2. When discussing immigration and calling for increased immigration visas, he said that should include Western Europeans, who in his own words, "help build this country"

Gillibrand won the debate hands down, but even with all the points she scored, it's DioGuardi's words that stuck with me most because of how over-the-line they were.

Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme. It's effectively a pension/annuity, and operates in that manner. Workers pay into the system while they're younger, and when they reach the designated retirement age they then collect a monthly check based upon the amount of money they paid into the system.  That makes it like any other pension or annuity. To call Social Security a Ponzi scheme is to say that of any pension plan or annuity.

With immigration, if DioGuardi simply stopped with favoring increasing immigration visas and said nothing of Western Europeans or how they built this country, that would have been okay.  However, once he added that last part, he crossed a line. This country wasn't built only by Western Europeans. It was built by everyone that immigrated here and already lived here, and it continues to be built by everyone living here today and everyone that comes here today.