Well, it has finally happened. Bush is so anxious to espouse Social Security that he has finally brought up the elephant in the room - the huge amount of government I.O.U.'s in the SS coffers...
"A lot of people in America think there is a trust -- that we take your money in payroll taxes and then we hold it for you and then when you retire, we give it back to you," Bush said in a speech at the University of West Virginia at Parkersburg.
"But that's not the way it works," Bush said. "There is no trust `fund' -- just IOUs that I saw firsthand," Bush said.
Earlier, Susan Chapman of the Office of Public Debt Accounting had shown Bush an ivory four-drawer filing cabinet with numeric locks. "This is it," she said.
"This is what exists," Bush said, illustrating his point that the promise of future Social Security benefits are simply stashed in a file
yahoo news link
I believe he thinks that this will benefit him - after all it's more ammunition for his dismantling of SS. However, I see this as his trojan horse. For one, now that he has raised the I.O.U. point, it is up to us to define how many of those I.O.U.'s are due to his "leadership". (I will do this another day if noone else does - I'm at work now, and can't).
Two, it blatantly points out the problems with the governments ability to be trusted, and to handle our tax money properly.
Thanks, Bush, for doing our job for us! Please, let's not let this one pass by!
Heck, guess I will do a poll...