Rimjob's excellent diary this morning points out that Bush's proposed budget includes cuts to the Social Security survivor benefit for widows of fallen soliders.
Of course, perhaps the reason for such a cut is to carry out Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. Thought privitization was dead? Read on...
Turns out the Bushites pulled another head fake on you, me, Congress and the nation. While he appeared to declare Social Security reform DOA at his recent State of the Union Address (proposing yet another blue-ribbon commission and nothing more), his number crunchers were actually
coming up with a diversion of Social Security revenue to pay for private accounts in the '07 Budget:
Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.
His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.
Now THAT'S a way to promote the solvency of the program...diversion of nearly 3/4 of a TRILLION dollars to pay for those pesky private accounts.
But regardless, the Bushites remained determined to see this through:
"The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social Security modernization," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an interview Tuesday, but "the president still cares deeply about this. " Duffy asserted that Bush would have been remiss not to include in the budget the cost of something that he feels so strongly about, and he seemed surprised at my surprise that Social Security privatization had been written into the budget without any advance fanfare.
Duffy said privatization costs were included in the midyear budget update that the Office of Management and Budget released last July 30, so it was logical for them to be in the 2007 budget proposals. But I sure didn't see this coming -- and I wonder how many people outside of the White House did.
Nevertheless, it's here. Unlike Bush's generalized privatization talk of last year, we're now talking detailed numbers. On page 321 of the budget proposal, you see the privatization costs: $24.182 billion in fiscal 2010, $57.429 billion in fiscal 2011 and another $630.533 billion for the five years after that, for a seven-year total of $712.144 billion.
Of course, there is that pesky "details" thing. Unlike his Poppy, Dubya has the "vision" thing down (warped as it is). But he has a problem with details:
It's not clear how big a reduction in the basic benefit Social Security recipients would have to take in return for being able to set up these accounts, or precisely how the accounts would work.
Of course, the whole plan, as outlined in the article, is to make Social Security less of a right, and more like a true "entitlement" (Republican buzzword for "government money given to freeloaders"):
Bush also wants to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated for most people by adopting so-called progressive indexing. Lower-income people would continue to have their Social Security benefits tied to wages, but the benefits paid to higher-paid people would be tied to inflation.
Wages have typically risen 1.1 percent a year more than inflation, so over time, that disparity would give lower-paid and higher-paid people essentially the same benefit. However, higher-paid workers would be paying substantially more into the system than lower-paid people would.
This means that although progressive indexing is an attractive idea from a social-justice point of view, it would reduce Social Security's political support by making it seem more like welfare than an earned benefit.
Wow. They sure do know how to run the class/age/race warfare game, don't they? Gum up the works so that Social Security is taken down, ONCE AND FOR ALL.
If there is one saving grace in all this, after reading this budget, there is no way in hell he'll ever get this budget passed in an election year. The downside, of course, is he will get his increased defense spending, his permenant tax cuts, and some moderate "nonsecurity discretionary" (read: programs that help the middle class and poor) cuts. And the deficit will continue to grow. Again.
On the other hand, this budget, with proposals nearly everyone can hate, Democrat and Republican, is the clearest indication of an entrenched lame duck at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Well, that, and as I sit five blocks from the White House typing this, the constant "QUACKING" I hear is driving me up a wall....