from my blog, Basie!
It's almost difficult to remember now, but there was a time this year when the vast majority of the political discourse in Washington and around the country was devoted to President Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security. What happened to the proposal? CQ Today's Midday Update (a free email service) reports that the Senator with the most control over the entitlement program has said that the "reform" is effectively dead until 2009 -- at the earliest.
Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, said today that he is "very pessimistic" about the prospects for overhauling Social Security any time soon, predicting that another push to change the program may not be possible until 2009.
In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Grassley noted that months of presidential speeches and many meetings of the Finance Committee's Republican members failed to yield any movement on the issue this year, thanks to opposition from Democrats and GOP moderates.
Polls showed strong public resistance to White House proposals to allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes to individual investment accounts in exchange for reduced guaranteed benefits.
"I'm very pessimistic about it in the future," Grassley said.
Grassley has made it clear he is more interested in fixing Social Security's financial problems than in creating individual accounts. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who has written legislation that would bring Social Security back into long-term financial balance, has said he doubts Congress will return to the issue again before the next president's second term.
Grassley says 2009, Kolbe says 2013... What ever happened to the sense of urgency trumpeted by Republicans not even a year ago? If the reform was imminently needed nine months ago, shouldn't it be
more imminently needed today? And if private accounts are so necessary for the program, why don't Congressional Republicans follow through with the President's efforts to create the new program?
If Republicans were actually interested in slamming through revisions to the Social Security program, they would go ahead and do it. What of a potential Democratic filibuster in the Senate? If the GOP is willing to get rid of filibusters of judges, shouldn't it also be willing to get rid of the filibuster over an issue as imminently problematic as Social Security?
Republican spinners often call the Democrats the "do nothing" party. But given Republicans' apprehension to do what was and is necessary to pass the Bush plan on Social Security, it seems the only "do nothing" party is the GOP.
for more politics and campaign 2006 news, visit my blog at Basie.org