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Economists for Dean.
There is growing evidence that the Bush campaign is finding it difficult to come up with an agenda for reelection.
First, by creating permanent deficits as far as the eye can see, it is difficult for them to now advocate any new spending or tax cuts. But, you say, "being irresponsible hasn't stopped them in the past, why not now?" Well this time they are up for re-election and the chorus of "shrill" voices calling for fiscal sanity is growing rapidly and now includes such mainstream voices like The Financial Times, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray, not to mention right wing groups like the CATO Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Even Bush's top economist, Greg Mankiw acknowledged the difficulty in a recent New York Times article.
Second, the key issue that Bush had his eye on for the second term, privatizing social security, looks to be a casualty of the Medicare bill as the
Wall Street Journal notes:
"Hidden in Mr. Bush's victory, however, is a big political setback. While the Medicare bill takes him closer to a second term, it takes him further from achieving one of his most important second-term goals. The substance of the deal, and the manner in which he achieved it, make fixing Social Security during his presidency harder -- perhaps even impossible.
That would be no small reversal. Mr. Bush believes in overhauling Social Security through private accounts as a matter of philosophy and a test of leadership. His adviser Karl Rove believes in it as a matter of long-term strategy that could sever one of the Democrats' political lifelines. Before Sept. 11, the White House thought it might be done by now.
But the Medicare outcome has left his allies on Social Security pessimistic. "It sets back reform in nearly all respects," says Bill Frenzel, a former Republican congressman who served on Mr. Bush's 2001 Social Security commission. Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who backs Bush-style partial privatization, fears Congress now may resist changing the program for another decade.
There are at least three reasons for this. The first is the way Republican leaders steamrolled their Democratic counterparts. While shoving the bill through the House on a precedent-shattering three-hour House roll call, they stiffed liberal icon Ted Kennedy after having relied on him to shepherd Medicare legislation through the Senate in the first place.
A veneer of bipartisanship provides critical political cover for changes in entitlement programs. But Mr. Bush was left with a thin veneer -- and the price for recreating one on Social Security has gone way up.
A second complication is the way Mr. Bush's party lashed its fortunes on Medicare to AARP. That alliance shielded Republicans from attack, and burnished AARP's credibility for independence from Democrats. If AARP followed up by backing Mr. Bush on Social Security , that would be a huge Republican coup.
Well, guess what? AARP opposes Mr. Bush's ideas on Social Security -- strongly. In an interview, Chief Executive Bill Novelli says the 35-million-member organization will fight partial privatization just as fervently as it backed the Medicare bill. He predicts "a fierce political debate."
If Republican warriors on Capitol Hill were primed for battle, Mr. Bush might prevail in the wake of a partywide 2004 sweep. But they aren't. Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, who defended the House Republican majority in 2000 and 2002 as chairman of the party's campaign committee, calls Mr. Bush's Social Security plans "a bridge too far." His successor, Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, says neither the House nor Senate is ready for "a quick-fix solution on Social Security ."
And no wonder. Instead of insisting on systemwide cost savings in Medicare, Mr. Bush allowed reform to be relegated to distant "demonstration projects" that won't start until he has left office, if at all. What the president and Republican leaders used instead to amass majorities were billions of dollars for health-care providers and Medicare beneficiaries alike. Just like his earlier tax-cut and farm-bill wins, Medicare was an expensive victory.
And that, in the end, is the biggest obstacle that the Medicare debate has erected for Social Security overhaul. "If you're buying votes, the market stays open," observes Republican Sen. John McCain, who backs Social Security privatization but is "not optimistic." With yesterday's budget surpluses heading toward $500 billion deficits, even the Bush administration's cash register is near-empty.
So what's left? Bush is likely to push for "savings accounts" that will disproportionately benefit the wealthy and which will have huge budget ramifications but not during the first 10 years. Here, maybe, just maybe, the media will have caught on to the Bush budget games and call it fairly rather than blather on uncritically (the way say, a typical Richard Stevenson New York Times article does).
More likely, I've got a feeling that we might be back to looking at silly wedge issues designed to divide the electorate e.g. gay marriage and any other "Willie Horton" issue Karl Rove can dredge up if he can ever break into Dean's Vermont records. The hope is that with the life and death issues of Iraq and 9/11 still in the air the voters will not tolerate a campaign devoid of substance.
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