Thursday, December 23, 2004
Slick George's Non-Plan
Bush Criticized Over Social Security Plan0 comments
Here are some things to keep in mind while you watch the Social Security Privatization debate play itself out:
- It's not needed.
- It won't work.
- They're going to pay for it all on credit.
- It will bankrupt the economy.
- They will then gut your SSI benefits.
- Those who do poorly with their new plan will be allowed to starve in the streets.
- We will eventually need a new, expensive program to save our elderly from starving in the streets. We will call this plan: Social Security.
Other than all that, it's a simply spiffy plan.
"Social Security is like a car with a flat tire," said Peter Orszag, an economist at the liberal Brookings Institution and adviser in the Clinton White House. "There is a problem. We need to fix the flat tire. But we don't need to replace the car."
But this has nothing to do with mere necessary fixes. That would simply be sane, logical, intelligent, and of scope. Not talents necessarily possessed by the Bush administration.
The truth is simple.
The Far Right/Wall Street cabal and their friends in the administration want to kill SSI, one of the last remaining programs of the FDR era, by any means necessary. Duping impressionable young Americans with lies about their future—when they're already terrorized by the Bush economic debacle—is as low as Bernie Kerik's blaming his woes on a non-existent nanny.
If they have to lie and distort facts and figures until they sound scary to you, then they will do so.
Bush has also cleverly attempted to have his cake and eat it too, as it were.
He's running around, trashing the current and future plan to any human being who will listen. It's all doom and gloom, as far as his speeches are concerned. But he's not going to tell you his plan until the world is beating down his door for a New Plan.
So, if people fall for it, he can come out with a plan that's pre-sold. If they don't, he won't have squandered any of his precious capital.
Bush repeated his demand for congressional action on Social Security, but refused to provide details.
"Don't bother to ask me," he said, making clear he would not engage in a public debate about Social Security until he gives Congress "a solution at the appropriate time."
The administration has said a plan is still being crafted.
"The temptation is going to be ... to get me to negotiate with myself in public. To say, you know, 'What's this mean, Mr. President? What's that mean?' I'm not going to do that," Bush said. "The law will be written in the halls of Congress. And I will negotiate with them, with the members of Congress."
Yeah, right.
Anyone remember any time when this administration actually NEGOTIATED with members of Congress, rather than just sending down marching orders for the rubber-stamp crowd?
Slick, George. Very slick.
posted by Gotham 3:05 PM
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