President Bush is trying to pull a double head fake, linked fly wedge reverse on us. Last year the President supported slashing Social Security and putting my parents' retirement incomes at risk by privatizing and redirecting Social Security to his friends on Wall Street. He was soundly and rightly defeated. I don't want my parents' ability to enjoy their oil age to be dependent on Enron not happening again. I know you don't want the same thing.
Last week, at the State of the Union, he acknowledged that his plans went no where last year, and while it is nice to see Mr. Bush acknowledge reality, he has decided to try and slip privatization into his budget.
NewsWeek's Allen Sloan on Feb. 8, 2006 reports the following:
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......
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.
This is a ridiculous proposal with the same logic that is required to assume an amputation is the proper treatment for the deep cat scratch on my left hand. Social Security over the course of time using comparatively pessimistic assumptions on productitivity, immigration, lifespans and working lifespans needs at most minor tweaks. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated in 2002 that the Social Security shortfall over 75 years was less than the half the cost of extending President Bush's tax cuts that passed in 2001 for the same time period.
As Share of GDP Present Value
Social Security Shortfall 0.72% $3.7 Trillion dollars
Tax Cut [2001] 1.68% $8.7 trillion dollars
President Bush's budget calls for all of his tax shifts to be made permanent. His proposals are looking to shift as much risk onto the individual and away from the notion of a social safety net that has, is, and will utilize the power of government to smooth out risks.
These are the moral values that President Bush supports. They are the moral values that Representative Murphy supports. They are not mine.
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Copyright 2006