This is how much you should trust Mitch on Social Security
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, handing Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes yet another golden issue in her campaign to thwart McConnell's sixth term in the U.S. Senate
during a Thursday speech at the Louisville Rotary Club:
Though he hasn’t mentioned it much on the campaign trail over the past year, McConnell specifically touted his effort to push President George W. Bush’s plans to reform Social Security in 2005, which would have set up private accounts for retirees.
“After Bush was re-elected in 2004 he wanted us to try to fix Social Security,” said McConnell. “I spent a year trying to get any Democrat in the Senate — even those most reasonable Democrat of all, Joe Lieberman – to help us.”
Another way of looking at what happened is this: Bush's scheme for private Social Security accounts was so deeply unpopular that not even Joe Lieberman, who would go on to leave the Democratic Party and endorse John McCain in 2008, could support it. It was so unpopular that Republicans, even though they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, couldn't push it through.
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And yet here we are in 2014, with Mitch McConnell bragging about his failed effort to push it through. Of course, this is Mitch McConnell, so he stopped short of saying he'd try to do it again, instead refusing to tell Insider Louisville's Joe Sonka what his plans would be:
Insider Louisville asked McConnell after the event if he would make a push for such reforms to Social Security if he was elected Senate Majority Leader and could set the agenda, but he declined to reveal if he would do so.
“I’m not announcing what the agenda would be in advance,” said McConnell. “We’re not in the majority yet. We’ll have more to say about that later,” assumedly meaning at some point after the election in 12 days.
It's worth remembering that before the 2004 election, President Bush also
refused to say whether he'd try to create private Social Security accounts. Of course, that's exactly what he ended up doing, so the mere fact that McConnell—like Bush before him—is being slippery about his agenda shouldn't stop Grimes from pouncing.