Charlie Crist Strikes Again, With 'Misleading' Social Security Attack Ad

Gov. Charlie Crist's U.S. Senate campaign just released another ad on YouTube attacking Marco Rubio over his stance on Social Security. "In his own words," the ad says, "Rubio supports Social Security reform and raising the retirement age. Crist used a similar message in the recent past, and was condemned by many as trying to scare Florida's seniors with false information."

Rubio's camp fired back with this press release: "In his latest desperate attempt to say and do anything to win an election, Charlie Cristhas launched a desperate, false attack ad designed solely to mislead Florida voters and scare seniors about Marco Rubio's Social Security position. The ad falsely claims that Rubio wants to cut Social Security benefits to 'balance the budget on the backs of seniors.' This claim is demonstrably false."

Politifact, by the way, found the ad to be "half true."

What Crist doesn't show in the ad is something Rubio has been saying for quite some time now -- that those changes are not for seniors currently on Social Security or even close to it.

Rubio has said those reforms would be for people 20 to 30 years away from retirement, giving them time to make adjustments and prepare.

Rubio was quoted on Sept. 26, in an interview on CBS's Face the Nation:

"Younger workers like myself, people 39 years of age like I am -- we're going to have to accept that there's going to be some changes to Social Security," Rubio said. "And perhaps they're going to have to change the way the benefit is indexed. Perhaps we're going to have to continue to allow the retirement age to fluctuate, as it has been doing since the early 1980s.

"But again, that's for younger workers like myself who have 20 or 30 years to prepare for this. People that are on the system now, or let's say 10 years from retirement or 12 years from retirement, these folks can't all of a sudden make a change to adjust for it. So I think we have to start talking honestly about the long-term challenges facing a very important program, Social Security, because we want to save it. It's important. We want to preserve it."