I know it's low-hanging fruit, but the Bushies make me so mad when they intentionally misrepresent the facts. See what Cheney said today:
The President and I are strongly committed to building an ownership society in the United States. From the beginning of our administration, we've set out to help more Americans have a chance to own a house, a small business, a health care plan, and a retirement plan. In all of these areas, ownership is the path to opportunity, greater independence, and more control over your own life. Everyone deserves a chance to live the American Dream, to build up wealth of their own, and to have assets for retirement that government can never take away.
Ownership Society is codeword for "Fend for yourself" society. This is what the Bush Administration means. The opposite of "Ownership Society" is "Collective Safety Net Society".
In Collective Safety Net Society, everybody shares the risks for everybody else. It has universal healthcare, disaster care, retirement care, care for the poor or disabled, etc. Basically, everyone is safe. The only expense is that everyone pays into it. But that's okay, because everyone's a little at risk. The only people at all hurt by this system are the very rich who don't need the safety net. The purpose of the Bush Administration's "Ownership Society" is to return this "wrongly taken" money from the rich and make the poor, disabled, and unlucky fend for themselves. Bush will say people can control their own fate under his plans, but in reality, no one can plan for the kinds of things only a universal safety net can provide for.
And this underscores one of our fundamental obligations in Washington: to be good stewards of the taxpayer's dollar, to keep the federal government's claim on workers' paychecks as low as possible.
This requires, first of all, that we keep a close eye on federal spending. Every year of our administration, we've reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending. This year the President's budget will reduce it again, and trim or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities. By passing these reforms, we'll save the American taxpayer another $14 billion next year -- and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009.
This made me so mad. How can he say this and look at himself in the mirror in the morning. How could he emphasize the positive aspects of cutting the budget when the cuts go to social programs. How can he talk about an obligation to be "good stewards of the taxpayer's dollar" and to "keep a close eye on federal spending" when he's turned a surplus into record deficits that have required the raising of the debt ceiling. All this debt makes us beholden to foreign lenders. And this is why they're not conservatives. Democrats may tax and spend, but that pays for itself. Republicans tax-cut and spend. And they claim to be the party of big business!? Bush wants to run the government like he's CEO of a business!? He'd get fired for cutting prices and increasing the advertising budget. Argh. And then he says "we're on track to cut the deficit in half" as if the goal of budget policy is to cut the deficit. No buddy, it's not to have a deficit. If you wanna spend some money and go into debt, there's plenty of good causes without killing over 100,000 lives, wounding more, and costing some $2 trillion!
We have a duty, as well, to keep the tax burden under control -- and here again we've made good progress over the last five years. Working with Congress, we reduced taxes for everyone who pays income taxes -- leaving more money in the hands of workers and families and giving small businesses more resources to expand and to hire. We increased the tax incentives for small businesses to invest in new equipment, and we cut the taxes on dividends and capital gains. And because a lifetime of thrift and hard work should not be penalized at the end, we also began phasing out the federal death tax.
What does it mean to keep the tax burden under control? Is there some magic number that's good and another that's bad? He says they've made good progress but all they've done is cut taxes for the rich. The only people that's good progress for are the rich and the politicians they support. The line about the tax cuts giving money to small business and the working class is just bullshit.
And then capital gains taxes and estate tax (aka death tax) are big incomes of money for the government mostly at the expense of, oh yeah, the rich. Seems like the rich have been really poorly treated in America until Bush-Cheney came into power, right? Poor bastards.
The tax relief of the last several years has had an enormous positive impact on the economy -- making the recession one of the shortest and shallowest ever, and setting the nation on a path of healthy, vigorous economic growth.
Again, positive impact for the rich, negative impact for the poor. Lying bastard.
Thanks to the effects of tax relief and a growing economy, real after-tax income in the United States has grown by over 8 percent per person since '01 -- making it easier for working people to put away more money away for retirement
See
Average American Family Income DeclinesLatimes: "An economic slump and stock market bust in the early part of the decade weakened the finances of American households as average family income fell between 2001 and 2004 and family wealth grew at a much slower rate than in previous years, according to a government report released today.
The results of the survey by the Federal Reserve contrasted sharply with reports covering the late 1990s, when a stock market boom and rapidly growing economy gave a substantial boost to family wealth and incomes.
Between 2001 and 2003, the average family income after taxes fell 2.3% to $70,700 a year. In contrast, average income shot up 17.3% in the previous three-year period.
Meanwhile, median family wealth grew 1.5% during 2001-2004, compared to the 10.3% jump in the previous three-year period."
One effective reform, which the President signed into law as part of the Medicare Reform Act, is the health savings account, or HSA. HSA's help control cost by allowing businesses or workers to buy low-cost insurance policies for catastrophic events and then save, tax-free, for their routine, out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Yes, ownership society solves all problems. What, you can't make the deductable? Too bad.
It's important to remember -- gathered, as we are, at a summit on retirement savings -- that the Social Security trust fund is not a savings system. It is a pay-as-you-go system, in which the benefits of current retirees come directly from the payroll taxes of current workers. The problem is simple to state: With an aging population, and a steadily falling ratio of workers to retirees, the system is on a course to eventual bankruptcy.
Right on count one, "not a trust fund". (But there is a trust fund, and it's job is to save the surplus now for when baby boomers retire. However, Bush has "borrowed" this fund dry and refuses to repay it. He's created the problem). As to the second part, it is pay as you go, but that's because when FDR created it, it didn't make sense to wait 65 years for anyone to get benefits. So, started helping people immediately. See previous comment as to how the trust fund will save the system when Bush pays it back.
On all of the issues I've touched upon today -- from tax cut permanence and savings incentives, to effective entitlement reform, to pension protection, the sooner we take action, the better. And the best hope for lasting results is to look past the partisan divide and to find common ground. We're in a political business, and it's no surprise to encounter strong views and tough arguments. And we should not expect any of the work to be easy. But I hope we will find a spirit of bipartisanship in the months ahead, and the President and I are committed to reaching out and doing everything we can to make consensus possible.
Oh, so now that he knows America has rejected the plan, he turns to the democrats to gain support for it? Or perhaps he just wants to sound good as bipartisan-friendly. Dude, bipartisanship is when you compromise on things you disagree about because you need a solution. It is not when Joe Lieberman signs onto a Republican bill.