Friday, February 27, 2004
From whence?
What a surprise--they're talking about cutting Social Security benefits.
201k is hardly shocked. We see this as phase two of the right's long-term plan to destroy FDR's most successful program--one into which Americans have paid enormous amounts of money.
To those who suggest that the problem with Social Security transcends party, we ask simply: what happened the the huge surplus that Bill Clinton left for George Bush a mere three years ago, and how did it turn into a half-trillion dollar deficit?
The answer we hear from Republicans--it was the economic downturn, it was the terrorist attacks, it's the war in Iraq, the dog ate my surplus--are rubbish. What happened is that George Bush succeeded in carrying out the right's ancient plan to get rid of Social Security not by assaulting it directly--which the public would never accept--but by killing it from within with a lack of funding--which the public wouldn't suspect in a million years a president would do, especially one who denies it so sincerely.
But this president does a lot of things he denies sincerely. In fact, in a lot of ways it's what he does best, and Americans should wake up to this reality before their Social Security goes the way of the budget surplus, Enron's 401k, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the minutes of Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings, and George Bush's National Guard paper trail.
Let us be blunt with you, dear readers: the reason they're not proposing to cut the benefits of those nearing retirement is that those Americans pay attention to these sorts of things and would not accept it, while those a little further away are too busy, too trusting, or too naive to realize they're getting shafted.
The problem was, whoever did the Cato website forgot to change the "title" tag in the html when he or she changed the text. Take a look:
201k is hardly shocked. We see this as phase two of the right's long-term plan to destroy FDR's most successful program--one into which Americans have paid enormous amounts of money.
To those who suggest that the problem with Social Security transcends party, we ask simply: what happened the the huge surplus that Bill Clinton left for George Bush a mere three years ago, and how did it turn into a half-trillion dollar deficit?
The answer we hear from Republicans--it was the economic downturn, it was the terrorist attacks, it's the war in Iraq, the dog ate my surplus--are rubbish. What happened is that George Bush succeeded in carrying out the right's ancient plan to get rid of Social Security not by assaulting it directly--which the public would never accept--but by killing it from within with a lack of funding--which the public wouldn't suspect in a million years a president would do, especially one who denies it so sincerely.
But this president does a lot of things he denies sincerely. In fact, in a lot of ways it's what he does best, and Americans should wake up to this reality before their Social Security goes the way of the budget surplus, Enron's 401k, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the minutes of Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings, and George Bush's National Guard paper trail.
Let us be blunt with you, dear readers: the reason they're not proposing to cut the benefits of those nearing retirement is that those Americans pay attention to these sorts of things and would not accept it, while those a little further away are too busy, too trusting, or too naive to realize they're getting shafted.
February 27, 2004201k isn't big into images, preferring to fill the page with long-winded blather. But here a picture we found last year comes in handy. It's from the website of the Cato Institute, who are the leading architects of the right's effort to slowly disassemble Social Security. We took a "snapshot" of it on the 201k supercomputer back in September of 2002--just before the elections--when Republicans in both the Congress and the White House were insisting they'd never wanted the "privatization" of Social Security, but rather were in favor of the newly-named "personal retirement accounts", euphemistically offered as Social Security "choice".
The Hot Potato of Issues Is Dropped Anew
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — Ever since the 2000 campaign, when he began pushing the idea of shifting some Social Security taxes to private personal investment accounts, President Bush has danced around the question of whether more painful steps would also be necessary to put the retirement system on sound financial footing.
So when Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, said on Wednesday that prudent long-term fiscal policy in the face of federal deficits would require cuts in benefits, Mr. Bush, who is headed into what looks like another close election, instantly distanced himself.
He restated his longstanding position that people in retirement or near retirement age should not see any change in their expected benefits and added that younger workers should be able to count on a combined benefit, from Social Security and the proposed investment accounts, at least equal to what they are promised now.
His own economists, though, are more explicit about what his approach to Social Security would require.
In the latest Economic Report of the President, sent under Mr. Bush's signature this month to Congress, the White House Council of Economic Advisers recommended some reduction in the benefits promised under the current system as part of a broader overhaul that would add benefits from the personal accounts.
"Reform should include moderation of the growth of benefits that are unfunded and can therefore be paid only by assessing taxes in the future," the report said.
The problem was, whoever did the Cato website forgot to change the "title" tag in the html when he or she changed the text. Take a look:
