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 Myths Debunked:
Social Security Should Be Privatized

Articles begin in January of 2005.

Get ready, America.  This is what you voted for.  You Bush voters have no one but yourselves to blame.  But, of course, you’ll blame liberals.  You always do.
The New York Times

Bigger Republican Majority Plans to Push Bush Agenda

By CARL HULSE

Published: January 2, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - A more Republican and more conservative Congress convenes on Tuesday, with Republicans intending to use their greater strength in the House and Senate to help President Bush pursue a second-term agenda of major changes in bedrock programs like Social Security and income taxes.

"This is going to probably be the most productive two years of our Republican majority," said Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader. "It's not just Social Security and tax reform, it's tort reform, regulatory reform, restraining spending, redesigning the House, redesigning the government."

Nine new senators and 41 House freshmen will be sworn in as the 109th Congress opens at noon on Tuesday, but the ceremony could be quickly overshadowed by a resumption of the sharp partisanship that was a hallmark of the Congress that ended last month.

In the House, the two parties are poised for an opening-day fight over a package of rule changes that Democrats and outside watchdog groups say are intended to dilute the power of the House Ethics Committee after it admonished Mr. DeLay three times last year…

Washington Post

A Big Push On Social Security

Private Accounts Are Bush Priority

By Jim VandeHei
Saturday, January 1, 2005; Page A01

President Bush's political allies are raising millions of dollars for an election-style campaign to promote private Social Security accounts, as Democrats and Republicans prepare for what they predict will be the most expensive and extensive public policy debate since the 1993 fight over the Clinton administration's failed health care plan.

With Bush planning to unveil the details of his Social Security plan this month, several GOP groups close to the White House are asking the same donors who helped reelect Bush to fund an extensive campaign to convince Americans -- and skeptical lawmakers -- that Social Security is in crisis and that private accounts are the only cure…

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The New York Times

Stopping the Bum's Rush

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 4, 2005

The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons are now trying another bum's rush. If they succeed, we will do nothing about the real fiscal threat and will instead dismantle Social Security, a program that is in much better financial shape than the rest of the federal government.

In the next few weeks, I'll explain why privatization will fatally undermine Social Security, and suggest steps to strengthen the program. I'll also talk about the much more urgent fiscal problems the administration hopes you won't notice while it scares you about Social Security.

Today let's focus on one piece of those scare tactics: the claim that Social Security faces an imminent crisis.

That claim is simply false. Yet much of the press has reported the falsehood as a fact. For example, The Washington Post recently described 2018, when benefit payments are projected to exceed payroll tax revenues, as a "day of reckoning."

Here's the truth: by law, Social Security has a budget independent of the rest of the U.S. government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security has a large and growing trust fund.

When benefit payments start to exceed payroll tax revenues, Social Security will be able to draw on that trust fund…

There are only two things that could endanger Social Security's ability to pay benefits before the trust fund runs out. One would be a fiscal crisis that led the U.S. to default on all its debts. The other would be legislation specifically repudiating the general fund's debts to retirees…

The long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts is five times the budget office's estimate of Social Security's deficit over the next 75 years. The botched prescription drug bill passed in 2003 does more, all by itself, to increase the long-run budget deficit than the projected rise in Social Security expenses…

Washington Post

Social Security Formula Weighed

Bush Plan Likely to Cut Initial Benefits

By Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen
Tuesday, January 4, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration has signaled that it will propose changing the formula that sets initial Social Security benefit levels, cutting promised benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades, according to several Republicans close to the White House.

Under the proposal, the first-year benefits for retirees would be calculated using inflation rates rather than the rise in wages over a worker's lifetime. Because wages tend to rise considerably faster than inflation, the new formula would stunt the growth of benefits, slowly at first but more quickly by the middle of the century. The White House hopes that some, if not all, of those benefit cuts would be made up by gains in newly created personal investment accounts that would harness returns on stocks and bonds.

But by embracing "price indexing," the president would for the first time detail the painful costs involved in closing the gap between the Social Security benefits promised to future retirees and the taxes available to fund them…

[Now remember that the reason why taxes aren’t available to fund the coming benefit requirements is because the current surplus in Social Security contributions is being used for Bush’s huge tax cuts for the wealthy and for his foreign wars.  Bush is giving OUR retirement money to Bill Gates (who doesn’t even want it) and to Halliburton (which does).—Caro]

I HEART Charlie Rangel!
Associated Press

Democrat Disputes Social Security 'Crisis'

Sat Jan 8,11:15 AM ET

WASHINGTON - There is no looming crisis in Social Security, and Congress should not rush to create private accounts, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. said Saturday.

"The facts prove that there is no imminent crisis with Social Security. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says Social Security can pay full benefits for nearly 50 years," Rangel said in the Democratic weekly radio address…

"The White House wants Americans to believe that Social Security is heading for an iceberg. They think that, by scaring people, they will help increase support for privatization," Rangel said.

The cost of moving to add private accounts has been estimated at more than $1 trillion. Rangel said the figure would be about $2 trillion, weakening Social Security and leaving future retirees hoping for a miracle from the stock market…

When will Americans catch on?  How many times will they fall for Bush’s “crises”, before the boy-cries-wolf effect kicks in?
Washington Post

Bush Paints His Goals As 'Crises'

President Reprises A First-Term Tactic

By Jim VandeHei
Saturday, January 8, 2005; Page A01

President Bush had great success in his first term by defining crises that demanded decisive responses. Now, as he begins a second term, Bush is returning to the same tactic to accomplish three longtime conservative goals.

Warning of the need for urgent action on his Social Security plan, Bush says the "crisis is now" for a system even the most pessimistic observers say will take in more in taxes than it pays out in benefits well into the next decade.

He calls the proliferation of medical liability lawsuits a "crisis in America" that can be fixed only by limiting a patient's right to sue for large damages. And Bush has repeatedly accused Senate Democrats of creating a "vacancy crisis" on the federal bench by refusing to confirm a small percentage of his judicial nominees…

Don’t misunderstand the intention with Social Security.
New York Newsday

Monday, January 10, 2005

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP, COLLECTIVE DEFAULT
The Bush proposals for Social Security are about dismantling the current system - and not saving it

BY TED MARMOR AND JERRY MASHAW
Ted Marmor and Jerry Mashaw, co-authors of "America’s Misunderstood Welfare State," teach at the law and management schools of Yale University.

January 10, 2005

President George W. Bush has promised to make Social Security secure for future generations, but claims not to have decided on the details for doing so. Perhaps not, but the trial balloons are getting pretty thick over the Rose Garden.

The emerging plan has three crucial elements. First, permit diversion of part of workers' FICA taxes into private accounts. Second, change the Social Security benefit formula from a wage-indexed to a price-indexed system. Third, exclude all proposals for increasing Social Security trust fund revenues if they involve any increases, however small, in anyone's taxes.

The first element, private accounts, does nothing to make Social Security financing secure. As a number of astute commentators have correctly argued, this part of the plan makes the short-term financing problem much worse. It can make the long-term picture better only by indulging in pie-in-the-sky economic assumptions. This balloon is suspended by nothing but hot air. Unfortunately, too many press reports simply repeat the illusions in the name of journalistic "balance."

The benefit formula change does make a difference. Indeed, it can bring the system back into close actuarial balance while preserving the purchasing power of today's benefits. Sound great? It's not. Indeed, this plan to secure Social Security is the exact equivalent of doing nothing at all…

There are many sensible ways to make Social Security secure without putting disproportionate or unfair burdens on anyone. Why has President Bush chosen to avoid all of the plans that make modest adjustments in benefits and taxes in favor of a radical dismantling of Social Security? Why rule all tax increases off the table?

The president gave his answer at his December "economic summit." "I love the idea of people being able to own something," he said. Privatizing Social Security is a key element of his "ownership society." Social Security, Bush reasons, has to be quietly dismantled because it is not about ownership. It is about social solidarity. It is built on the understanding that we run common risks that can be ameliorated only by collective action. And by making everyone a contributor as well as a recipient it affirms that we recognize our common fate and our obligations of both self and mutual support.

The president's vision of an ownership society is starkly different. He sees citizens as "owners" with the usual ownership right to exclude all others from sharing in their "property." If we end up poor in old age it is because we failed to manage our property successfully. We can then throw ourselves on the mercy of private charity or residual, means-tested welfare benefits.

This is an "us"/"them" vision of society. Every ship is to float on its own bottom…

But that ownership society business is all hooey.  The real reason why Bush wants to privatize Social Security is that he wants to pay off some of his biggest supporters.  When do we start to call it corruption?
Chicago Tribune

Investment pros see bonanza
Social Security proposal would add billions to investments and fees

By Ameet Sachdev and Lorene Yue, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune correspondent Mark Silva contributed to this report
Published January 9, 2005

The prospect of 100 million Americans each having $1,000 of their Social Security contributions to invest every year has investment professionals salivating at the potential financial bonanza.

About $100 billion a year would be freed up for stocks, bonds and other investments under a tentative plan President Bush has floated to fix the Social Security retirement system by creating private investment accounts.

The fees paid to brokers and money managers could run into the billions…

[B]ehind the scenes, investment firms and other pro-privatization business groups have reportedly met with White House and Congressional leaders. Many executives also raised millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Bush and other Republican leaders.

Meanwhile, industry groups have tried to downplay the potential financial boon to Wall Street…

The New York Times

For the Record on Social Security

Published: January 10, 2005

Late February is now the time frame mentioned by the White House for unveiling President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. The timing is no accident. By waiting until then, the president will conveniently avoid having to include the cost of privatization - as much as $2 trillion in new government borrowing over the next 10 years - in his 2006 budget, expected in early February.

In this and other ways, the administration is manipulating information - a tacit, yet devastating, acknowledgement, we believe, that an informed public would reject privatizing Social Security. For the record:

The administration has suggested that it would be justified in borrowing some $2 trillion to establish private accounts because doing so would head off $10 trillion in future Social Security liabilities. It's bad enough that the $10 trillion is a highly inflated figure, intended to overstate a problem that is reasonably estimated at $3.7 trillion or even considerably less. Worse are the true dimensions of the administration's proposed ploy, which were made painfully clear in a memo that was leaked to the press last week. Written in early January by Peter Wehner, the president's director of strategic initiatives and a top aide to Karl Rove, the president's political strategist, the memo states unequivocally that under a privatized system, only drastic benefit cuts - not borrowing - would relieve Social Security's financial problem…

At a recent press conference, Mr. Bush exaggerated the timing of the system's shortfall by saying that Social Security would cross the "line into red" in 2018. According to Congress's budget agency, the system comes up short in 2052; according to the system's trustees, the date is 2042. The year 2018 is when the system's trustees expect they will have to begin dipping into the Social Security trust fund to pay full benefits. If you had a trust fund to pay your bills when your income fell short, would you consider yourself insolvent?...

[If I had a trust fund that was in George W. Bush’s hands, then yes indeed I’d consider myself insolvent.—Caro]

Buck Fush

The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Bush's $6 trillion botch

The urgency of President Bush and congressional Republicans to barge ahead with "fixing" Social Security is understandable.

If they let too much time pass, people might wise up to the appalling botch they made in supposedly fixing Medicare and then rein them in before they can deliver the Social Security "reforms" their Wall Street backers want.

In case you missed it during the Christmas holidays, the Government Accounting Office just calculated the staggering scope of that botch.

The Medicare drug benefit the administration muscled through Congress, without even a pretense of funding and with deliberately misleading estimates, will add $6 trillion to $8 trillion to Medicare's shortfall over the next 75 years, the GAO determined.

That is nearly double the Social Security shortfall that President Bush is acting so alarmed about, and it "is one of the largest unfunded liabilities ever undertaken by the federal government," said Comptroller General David Walker, head of the GAO.

Medicare's financial distress, he said, "is much bigger (than Social Security's), it is much more immediate, and it is going to be much more difficult to effectively address."…

Notice any similarities in the before-the-war warnings and Bush’s doomsday predictions for Social Security?
Capitol Hill Blue

Dubya Turns Up the Scare Tactics on Social Security
By Staff and Wire Reports
Jan 12, 2005, 04:10

President Bush warned younger workers on Tuesday of a grim future for their Social Security benefits but critics accused him of exaggerating the retirement system's problems to try and sell his plan to change it.

Bush used the word "bankrupt" five times at a White House forum to raise alarms about the financial state of Social Security decades into the future.

"By the time today's workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt," he told an audience invited to a Social Security forum.

"So if you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act right now."

Rep. Sander Levin, a Michigan Democrat on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee said Bush was just trying to scare Americans into supporting his plan to let workers shift part of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts.

"There is a challenge here," Levin said. "There isn't a crisis."…

Is there a way to stop the lies?
The Washington Monthly

Political Animal

By Kevin Drum

January 12, 2005

THE PRESS AND THE PRESIDENT.... What's the answer to news stories like this?

Far from his dairy farm in central Utah, 27-year-old Josh Wright stepped onto a stage with President Bush on Tuesday and related the warning his father had given the other day in the barn.

"He looked me in the eye and he said, 'Don't depend on Social Security. You're independent....Don't plan on having Social Security there when you get older.' "

The president looked at Wright approvingly. "At your age," he said, Social Security "will be bust by the time it comes for you to retire."

...."If you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now," Bush said.

Now, these are obviously lies designed to convince young people that they will get no Social Security benefits at all when they retire — something that every serious analyst knows to be flatly false. Even in the worst case scenario beloved of Republicans, Social Security will never be bankrupt. It will merely pay out reduced — but still substantial — benefits starting 40 or 50 years from now.

So what's the right thing for the press to do?...

What should a responsible press do when faced with a president who baldly lies over and over about stuff like this in a blatant attempt to scare the hell out of people? Somebody needs to figure it out, because people like George Bush have no incentive to stop lying if the press lets them get away with it. It's a brave new world, guys.

Here’s what happened in Britain.
The New York Times

The British Evasion

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 14, 2005

We must end Social Security as we know it, the Bush administration says, to meet the fiscal burden of paying benefits to the baby boomers. But the most likely privatization scheme would actually increase the budget deficit until 2050. By then the youngest surviving baby boomer will be 86 years old.

Even then, would we have a sustainable retirement system? Not bloody likely.

Pardon my Britishism, but Britain's 20-year experience with privatization is a cautionary tale Americans should know about…

[T]here's an illuminating article on the British experience in The American Prospect, www.prospect.org, by Norma Cohen, a senior corporate reporter at The Financial Times who covers pension issues.

Her verdict is summed up in her title: "A Bloody Mess." Strong words, but her conclusions match those expressed more discreetly in a recent report by Britain's Pensions Commission, which warns that at least 75 percent of those with private investment accounts will not have enough savings to provide "adequate pensions."

The details of British privatization differ from the likely Bush administration plan because the starting point was different. But there are basic similarities. Guaranteed benefits were cut; workers were expected to make up for these benefit cuts by earning high returns on their private accounts.

The selling of privatization also bore a striking resemblance to President Bush's crisis-mongering. Britain had a retirement system that was working quite well, but conservative politicians issued grim warnings about the distant future, insisting that privatization was the only answer.

The main difference from the current U.S. situation was that Britain was better prepared for the transition…

The Independent, U.K.

Russian pensioners take to the streets in protest at benefit cut

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

13 January 2005

Thousands of Russian pensioners staged protests across the country yesterday against the abolition of generous Soviet-era social benefits.

Though the demonstrations were peaceful, analysts said the protests were the most serious in Russia since 1998, when disgruntled coal miners blocked railway tracks in protest at unpaid wages.

Yesterday was the third consecutive day of demonstrations, which have stretched from Russia's Far East to Moscow itself and at times brought vital transport arteries to a standstill…

FAIR  Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

ACTION ALERT:
ABC Muddles the Social Security Debate
Not "everyone agrees" with distorted claims

January 14, 2005

As the debate over Social Security privatization continues, so do the mainstream media distortions of the debate. On January 11, ABC News muddied the waters further with two one-sided and inaccurate reports.

On World News Tonight, anchor Peter Jennings started off the distortions in the show's "A Closer Look" segment. Having allowed that there is "some argument" about whether Social Security would, as Bush argued recently, "go bankrupt" without congressional intervention, Jennings continued: "But there's no question that baby boomers will place great strain on Social Security as they retire. And by 2042, by some measures, the system may not have enough cash to pay full benefits."

Actually, there's plenty of question about the notion that baby boomers will strain the system; the whole point of amassing a surplus in the trust fund in the first place was to absorb the strain of their retirement. And if it's true that "by some measures" (i.e., the Social Security trustees) the system won't have enough cash in 2042, it's also true that by other, less pessimistic, measures, it will; for example, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects payment of full benefits through at least 2052-- at which point the oldest boomers will be 106 and the youngest 88 (Economic Reporting Review, 1/10/05).

Some economists point out that the system, if the economy grows about as quickly in the future as it has in the past, will most likely never run short of cash…

Even if the system does need more cash four or five decades from now, it's not clear that this should be characterized as a "great strain."…

The same day, ABC's Good Morning America aired a segment that promised to "cut through some of the political rhetoric and look at the reality of what [Bush's Social Security plan] might mean." The show presented Bill and Vicki Wilson, a two-income couple with two kids and "retirement 20 years off," and turned to Michael Tanner of the pro-privatization Cato Institute for expert analysis of the Wilsons' situation.

Tanner told the Wilsons that under the current system, Bill should receive approximately $2,250 and Vicki $2,200 per month-- but that there's a "catch." ABC's Claire Shipman explained:

"One thing everyone agrees on, the Social Security system as it exists now won't be able to afford those payments for long after the Wilsons retire."

Not only doesn't "everyone agree" with this statement, it's patently untrue. Since the Wilsons will retire in about 20 years (or 2025), they would enjoy their full payments for nearly 20 years even under the pessimistic assumptions of the Social Security trustees, and nearly 30 years according to the CBO. Statistically, the Wilsons are quite likely to be dead before there is any question about Social Security's ability to pay their full promised benefits…

Bag News

This is what you voted for, America.  Deal with it.  Expect them to drag Harry and Louise out of the closet.
Washington Post

Social Security Push to Tap the GOP Faithful
Campaign's Tactics Will Drive Appeal

By Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei
Friday, January 14, 2005; Page A06

President Bush plans to reactivate his reelection campaign's network of donors and activists to build pressure on lawmakers to allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market, according to Republican strategists.

White House allies are launching a market-research project to figure out how to sell the plan in the most comprehensible and appealing way, and Republican marketing and public-relations gurus are building teams of consultants to promote it, the strategists said.

The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away.

Bush aides said that in addition to mobilizing the Republican faithful and tapping the power of business, they plan to target minority voters who have not been able to afford to save and might be open to the argument that the president's plan would turn them into investors. The campaign will also court younger voters, including many Democrats, who would potentially benefit the most from the change…

[Or, they might potentially be completely screwed out of any security whatsoever in retirement.  Who’s touting that?—Caro]

The New York Times

Social Security Enlisted to Push Its Own Revision

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: January 16, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 - Over the objections of many of its own employees, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort to publicize the financial problems of Social Security and to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution.

The agency's plans are set forth in internal documents, including a "tactical plan" for communications and marketing of the idea that Social Security faces dire financial problems requiring immediate action…

[A]gency employees have complained to Social Security officials that they are being conscripted into a political battle over the future of the program. They question the accuracy of recent statements by the agency, and they say that money from the Social Security trust fund should not be used for such advocacy.

"Trust fund dollars should not be used to promote a political agenda," said Dana C. Duggins, a vice president of the Social Security Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 50,000 of the agency's 64,000 workers and has opposed private accounts…

[Damn straight!  How dare they use my own money to rob me?—Caro]

LAST week, Bush said no tax hike.
CNN

Bush: No tax hike for Social Security
President rules out increase in payroll taxes to pay for reforming 64-year-old retirement program.
December 9, 2004: 1:44 PM EST

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Following a meeting with key advisers, President Bush promised Thursday he would not raise payroll taxes to help pay for overhauling Social Security.

"We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem," Bush told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Social Security experts…

THIS week, it’s another story.  When will Americans catch on to Bush’s lies?
Associated Press, posted at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Social Security tax hike feared
Bush official predicts 50% jump with no revamp

Alan Fram - Associated Press
Saturday, January 15, 2005

Washington --- Social Security taxes will have to rise by half if lawmakers don't revamp the giant program, President Bush's budget chief said Friday as the administration sought support for its overhaul plans.

The comments by Joshua Bolten came as Democrats accused the administration of hiding the costs of its plans for shoring up the pension system for the elderly and disabled…

''If we do nothing to fix Social Security, we will eventually need to raise Social Security payroll taxes on Americans by about 50 percent,'' he said.

Such an increase would stifle job creation and prompt employers to lower wages, Bolten said…

[This is tantamount to blackmail.  Allow us to give your Social Security money to the Wall Street sharks, or we’ll raise your payroll taxes by 50%.  And what will you bet that only the employEE portion of the contribution will be raised, not the employER portion?  No chance to steal from the middle class and the poor is ever left behind by these right-wing elites.—Caro]

The New York Times

That Magic Moment

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 18, 2005

White House officials themselves concede - or maybe boast - that their plan to sell Social Security privatization is modeled on their selling of the Iraq war. In fact, the parallels are remarkably exact.

Everyone has noticed the use, once again, of crisis-mongering. Three years ago, the supposed threat from Saddam somehow became more important than catching the people who actually attacked America on 9/11. Today, the mild, possibly nonexistent long-run financial problems of Social Security have somehow become more important than dealing with the huge deficit we already have, which has nothing to do with Social Security.

But there's another parallel, which I haven't seen pointed out: the politicization of the agencies and the intimidation of the analysts. Bush loyalists begin frothing at the mouth when anyone points out that the White House pressured intelligence analysts to overstate the threat from Iraq, while neocons in the Pentagon pressured the military to understate the costs and risks of war. But that is what happened, and it's happening again.

Last week Andrew Biggs, the associate commissioner for retirement policy at the Social Security Administration, appeared with Mr. Bush at a campaign-style event to promote privatization. There was a time when it would have been considered inappropriate for a civil servant to play such a blatantly political role. But then there was a time when it would have been considered inappropriate to appoint a professional advocate like Mr. Biggs, the former assistant director of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Privatization, to such a position in the first place.

Sure enough, The New York Times reports that under Mr. Biggs's direction, employees of the Social Security Administration are being forced to disseminate dire warnings about the system's finances - warnings that the employees say are exaggerated…

[T]he media, if they do their job, can check out the numbers and see that they don't match what Mr. Bush is saying…

[W]e've been here before. Fool me once ...

All Hat No Cattle

Washington Post

New Doubts On Plan For Social Security
House Republican Says Bush Plan Is Doomed, Seeks Review of System

By Mike Allen and Jonathan Weisman
Wednesday, January 19, 2005; Page A01

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) predicted yesterday that partisan warfare over Social Security will quickly render President Bush's plan "a dead horse" and called on Congress to undertake a broader review of the problems of an aging nation.

Thomas, one of Capitol Hill's most powerful figures on tax policy, is the highest-ranking House Republican official to cast doubt on the president's plan for creating individual investment accounts. He said that as an alternative, he will consider changes such as replacing the payroll tax as Social Security's financing mechanism and adding a savings plan for long-term or chronic care as "an augmentation to Social Security payments."…

[The idea of a savings plan for long-term care is the first semi-good idea I’ve heard from a Republican in many years.  I’d rather that it be an insurance plan, so that everyone benefits equally no matter what their contributions have been, but I probably won’t get my way on that.  And I’d really like to know what he means when he says he wants to replace the payroll tax as the funding mechanism.—Caro]

Thomas's comments, which took the White House by surprise, reflected some Republicans' view that the White House has mishandled the plan's rollout and that a fresh start is needed to allow a chance for getting Democratic support….

[I can’t help but doubt that Thomas’s comments took the White House by surprise.  This could be a planned ploy, to give Bush an excuse to renege on his campaign promise to privatize Social Security.

The White House could easily take Thomas down, if they wanted to.  Remember that as chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, he had an affair with a lobbyist to that committee (click through and then scroll down).  They were both married at the time.  Since the affair was hardly a blip on the radar screen at the time Thomas was being considered as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, all the Rove minions have to do is plant the information with Drudge and the right-wing bloggers, and order the radio talk show parrots to start pounding on it, and Thomas could be forced to resign in disgrace.

 If that doesn’t happen, you can be assured that what Thomas said was with the blessing of, if not at the behest of, the White House.—Caro]

Keep it up, Democrats!  Learn to win by losing.

Democrats Attack Bush on Social Security
AP via Yahoo! News - Jan 19 4:12 PM
Top Democrats in Congress toughened their attack Wednesday on President Bush's call for personal investment accounts under Social Security and said remarks by a powerful Republican committee chairman showed GOP lawmakers have little appetite for the accounts, either.

consortiumnews.com

The Freedom to Follow

By Robert Parry
January 21, 2005

What some Americans may have found annoying about George W. Bush’s second Inaugural Address was his use of a rhetorical device in which he stated obvious truisms about “freedom” with the suggestion that opponents of his policies – from invading Iraq to privatizing Social Security – must be people who hate freedom.

Bush has used this rhetorical technique before, as in Campaign 2002 when he created the impression that Senate Democrats who objected to Bush’s version of a Homeland Security bill were “not interested in the security of the American people.”

Though employed more subtly in his second Inaugural, the rhetorical device was back as Bush mixed together platitudes about “freedom” with oblique references to both his foreign and domestic policies.

The presidential message seemed to be that Americans who complain about his defiance of international law in Iraq, his assertion of near-unlimited presidential powers in the War on Terror or his plan to revamp the Social Security system by shifting it toward individual retirement accounts are not just opponents of Bush but opponents of freedom…

Some longtime listeners of Inaugural Addresses might argue that one or two of these fuzzy aphorisms are to be expected as a President tries to grab for immortality with a phrase that may last longer than the next day’s newspapers. But what was unusual about Bush’s speech was that these vapid truisms represented virtually its entire structure.

Bush used the banalities, in effect, to set up a straw man of opposition, as if anyone who didn’t agree with his unilateralist foreign policy was both dishonest and craven. He said, for instance, “America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.”…

Bush is juxtaposing himself as the brave leader who stands up for truth against his imaginary opponents who supposedly want to pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains or that women welcome humiliation or that human beings aspire to be bullied…

[T]he most troubling subtext tucked inside Bush’s paean to “freedom” may have been that the ultimate freedom for Americans today is their freedom to follow him.

TomPaine.com

Cheers For Bush's Ownership Society
Robert B. Reich
January 20, 2005

Robert B. Reich is the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University, and was the secretary of labor under former President Bill Clinton.

I want to be among the first to commend the president for choosing as his major domestic theme the "Ownership Society." What could be more important than giving more Americans an opportunity to own assets and build wealth? The president is obviously concerned that ownership in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been since the days of the robber barons in the late 19th century. The richest 1 percent now own as much as the bottom 90 percent put together.

I can't tell you exactly what he'll propose, but if his goal is to spread the wealth I expect he'll acknowledge that the present tax system isn't fair. People earning over half a million dollars a year are subject to the lowest tax rate in more than 50 years, and much of their unearned income isn't being taxed at all. Meanwhile, he'll explain that if you figure in payroll taxes, sales taxes and property taxes, average working Americans are paying more in taxes than ever before. So in the president's Ownership Society, middle and lower-income workers will pay less tax.  And this won't bust the budget because he'll reverse course and raise taxes on the rich.

I expect the president will also call for massive new federal investments in education—the key to spreading wealth in the new economy. In the Ownership Society, Washington will spend more on the nation's schools than it now spends on Iraq—starting with universal early childhood education so the minds of toddlers and pre-Ks are ready to learn, followed by smaller classrooms with fewer students and better-paid, highly qualified teachers. And access to college for any young person who can make good use of it, regardless of parental income.

Finally, the president will surprise some by saying he's not in favor of privatizing Social Security after all. That would just line the pockets of Wall Street bankers who'd rake in huge fees managing all those private accounts. No, in the Ownership Society, the first $10,000 of income will be exempt from Social Security taxes—and the president will make up the difference by raising the cap on earnings subject to the tax.

Now I may have some of the details wrong, but assuming the president is serious about creating an Ownership Society, he'll be announcing initiatives just like these. Won't he?

The New York Times

The Free Lunch Bunch

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 21, 2005

Did they believe they would be welcomed as liberators? Administration plans to privatize Social Security have clearly run into unexpected opposition. Even Republicans are balking; Representative Bill Thomas says that the initial Bush plan will soon be a "dead horse."

That may be overstating it, but for privatizers the worst is yet to come. If people are rightly skeptical about claims that Social Security faces an imminent crisis, just wait until they start looking closely at the supposed solution.

President Bush is like a financial adviser who tells you that at the rate you're going, you won't be able to afford retirement - but that you shouldn't do anything mundane like trying to save more. Instead, you should take out a huge loan, put the money in a mutual fund run by his friends (with management fees to be determined later) and place your faith in capital gains.

That, once you cut through all the fine phrases about an "ownership society," is how the Bush privatization plan works…

Sometimes I do find myself puzzled: why don't privatizers understand that their schemes rest on the peculiar belief that there is a giant free lunch there for the taking? But then I remember what Upton Sinclair wrote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

The Guardian, U.K.

A New Deal to scupper a presidency

Bush is taking a huge gamble with his assault on the social contract

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday January 20, 2005

In his second term, President Bush is determined on regime change. The country whose order he seeks to overthrow is not ruled by mullahs or Ba'athists. But members of his administration have compared its system to communism. The battle will be "one of the most important conservative undertakings of modern times", the deputy to White House political director Karl Rove wrote in a confidential memo. Since the election, the president has spoken often of the "coming crisis" and he has mobilised the government to begin a propaganda campaign to prepare public opinion for the conflict ahead. The nation whose regime he is set on toppling is the United States.

Since the New Deal, the American social contract has been built upon acceptance of its reforms. When Dwight Eisenhower became the first Republican president after Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, he never challenged the New Deal, solidifying the political consensus that had prevailed for decades. But now Bush has launched an assault on the social contract in earnest, seeking to blast away at its cornerstone, social security, which disburses pensions to the elderly and payments to the disabled…

To achieve this conservative dream, the public must first be convinced that social security is "bankrupt". The administration, Wehner writes, must "establish an important premise: the current system is heading toward an iceberg. We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course". Moreover, Wehner states, the private accounts are simply a wedge for future benefit cuts, though he does not advocate that the administration stresses that point.

And so Bush and Cheney insist that social security will soon be "flat bust". A political front group run by one of Rove's proteges, which produced the television commercials that trumpeted defamations about John Kerry's military record, is spinning out new ads on social security. The social security administration itself has been dragooned into sending out millions of letters telling recipients that the system is in "crisis"…

"It's a badly, badly flawed plan," Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the treasury and current Citigroup director, told me. "From a fiscal point of view it's horrendous. It adds to deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060."

Internet Weekly Report

Chicago Tribune

Dancing in the dark

Social Security `fix'--the next disaster

By R.C. Longworth, former Tribune senior correspondent and business editor
Published January 23, 2005

President Bush has promised to make Social Security reform the domestic centerpiece of his second term in office. But this reform, to be unveiled next month, shows all the unreality, fiscal irresponsibility and overhyped salesmanship of the keystones of his first term, the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich.

Like these two adventures, Social Security reform is a disaster in the making. For that reason, it is necessary to sort the facts from the fiction in this flawed proposal…

In his inaugural address Thursday, Bush said he wants to "build an ownership society" in America, and he has made clear that a key to that would be partial privatization of Social Security.

But he had launched his campaign for partial privatization of Social Security earlier this month with a fear-mongering speech that told young workers, "If you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now."

Vice President Dick Cheney followed this up by predicting "fiscal collapse" by 2042, leaving the government no option "other than to suddenly and dramatically reduce benefit payments by over 25 percent, or to impose a massive, economically ruinous tax increase on all American workers."

These two statements, by the two highest officers in the land, are not even remotely true…

No one knows how [Bush’s idea of] private accounts will work in practice. Bush says we will "own" them, which means we'll have control. Can we cash them in, to meet a medical emergency or college tuition? Then what happens when we retire? Can we invest them as we wish? If we invest in Singapore derivatives or Florida swampland and get wiped out, will the government let us starve?

Actually, there probably will be rules against cashing in, and Cheney says there will be government "guidelines" on where we can invest. Some "ownership."

Presumably, those "guidelines" will approve normal, solid, profitable companies. Like cigarette companies or (listen up, conservatives!) condom manufacturers. No? Then which companies will get the government seal of approval? And how many conservatives want the government to have this much clout on the stock market?

None of these questions is close to being answered, and they needn't be asked if Social Security is seen as what it is: an insurance plan, not a get-rich-quick scheme. It pays less than the stock market because, unlike the stock market, it's not risky. Its name is Social Security, not Social Maximum Return.

Buck Fush

The New York Times

Some See Risks For the G.O.P. in New Strength

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: January 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - President Bush begins his second term with the Republican Party in its strongest position in over 50 years, but his clout is already being tested by Republican doubts about his domestic agenda, rising national unease about Iraq and the threat of second-term overreaching, officials in both parties say.

With this election producing a second-term Republican president and solid majorities in both the Senate and the House, Mr. Bush's party is more dominant than at any time since Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928. As Mr. Bush embarks on an explicit effort to put an imprint on politics and policy that will long outlast his presidency, his advisers are heady over what several described as an opportunity to make a long-lasting realignment in the nation's political balance of power.

But even those advisers said Mr. Bush had at most two years before he faced the ebb that historically saps the authority of a second-term incumbent, a relatively short time to sell his far-reaching agenda. And Republicans say his situation could be complicated by the absence of an obvious heir, opening the way for competing wings of the party to battle over details and tactics on the very issues Mr. Bush is embracing.

Richard Norton Smith, a presidential scholar who is director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, said the Republican Party had "come closer now than they've been at any time in my lifetime" to being the nation's majority party. But Mr. Smith said historical cycles over the past century suggested that its dominance might be coming to a close.

"The calendar alone tells you this conservative cycle is long in the tooth," he said. "Add to that the divisions, or latent divisions, that exist with your own coalition. Once Bush is removed from the scene, and once he becomes in effect a lame duck, all those tensions are there."

The White House has described the election results as a mandate, and in his Inaugural Address on Thursday, Mr. Bush laid out his vision in sweeping terms.

But some Republicans said they were worried about overconfidence, including Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who invoked his experience serving alongside Speaker Newt Gingrich when Republicans captured the House in 1994. "Hubris is deadly," Mr. Sanford said…

Democrats, even while struggling with their own party divisions and confusion, are showing signs of coalescing into an aggressive opposition party, especially on issues like judicial appointments and Social Security.

Mr. Bush has repeatedly overcome doubts about his ability to win approval of controversial proposals. And his political advisers are confident going into this second term. They say that the party is poised to at least begin the broad political realignment and the diminishment of the Democratic Party that has been a goal of Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove…

[E]ven Republicans acknowledge there are questions about the durability and significance of the changes taking place. Most fundamentally, it is difficult today to measure whether the Republican successes of 2002 and 2004 were merely a ratification of Mr. Bush himself - a president running for re-election in wartime - or the start of a long-lasting shift to the Republican Party…

The critical question for Mr. Bush, his advisers and Democrats say, is the success or failure of his agenda, both in terms of getting it through Congress and winning support for it from the public. Recent polls show apprehension about important aspects of his Social Security plan, and an overwhelming sentiment that Mr. Bush does not know how to end the war in Iraq, which is increasingly unpopular…

[Of course, the reason the Bush administration has had so much success in pushing its agenda through Congress is that they kneecap anyone who gets in their way.  Just like a crime family.—Caro]

Los Angeles Times

January 18, 2005

Wall Street Lying Low on Social Security
By Tom Petruno and Walter Hamilton, Times Staff Writers

Discount stock trading pioneer Charles R. Schwab has long supported the idea of diverting a share of Social Security taxes into private investment accounts.

Schwab endorsed a book on the subject in 1999. His San Francisco-based company is helping to fund a group that is lobbying Congress for private accounts. And he has written newspaper op-ed pieces calling for more retirement savings options that would "reduce the dependence on government assistance."

But with the debate over Social Security's future now kicking into high gear, the 67-year-old Schwab is staying out of the public eye. "He has made a specific decision" to decline interview requests on the topic, a spokesman said.

Schwab's reticence is emblematic of the peculiar wallflower role adopted by much of the U.S. financial services industry when it comes to overhauling Social Security.

The nation's brokerages and mutual fund companies could be big winners if the government were to allow Americans to funnel some of their Social Security taxes into private investment accounts each year. Firms such as Fidelity Investments, Vanguard Group, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Schwab collectively could reap billions of dollars in management fees and commissions over the long term.

But the emotions triggered by President Bush's call for restructuring Social Security also have raised the risk that the financial industry could become a target of public ire…

Buck Fush

The New York Times

Backers of Gay Marriage Ban Use Social Security as Cudgel

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: January 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

The move came as Senate Republicans vowed on Monday to reintroduce the proposed amendment, which failed in the Senate last year by a substantial margin. Party leaders, who left it off their list of priorities for the legislative year, said they had no immediate plans to bring it to the floor because they still lacked the votes for passage.

But the coalition that wrote the letter, known as the Arlington Group, is increasingly impatient.

In a confidential letter to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, the group said it was disappointed with the White House's decision to put Social Security and other economic issues ahead of its paramount interest: opposition to same-sex marriage…

From the conservative
Congressman Ron Paul

Want to Reform Social Security? Stop Spending.

January 24,  2005 

Social Security reform promises to be the biggest domestic issue this year in Washington, but most of the proposals are nothing more than flim-flam.  The only honest solution to the future insolvency of the program is for Congress to stop spending so much money.  Unless Congress makes real cuts in spending-- and stops spending Social Security taxes on completely unrelated programs-- millions of Americans simply will not receive even a fraction of the money they paid into Social Security.  Ignore the rhetoric about tax increases and cuts in benefits, as though you are to blame for the problem!  All Social Security obligations could be met if Congress did not spend so much on other things…

[N]either political party proposes letting people opt out of Social Security, which exposes the lie that your contributions are set aside and saved.  After all, if your contributions really are put aside for your retirement, the money will be there earning interest, right?  If your money is put away in a trust fund account with your name on it, what difference would it make if your neighbor chooses not to participate in the program?

The truth, of course, is that your contributions are not put aside.  Social Security is simply a tax.  Like all taxes, the money collected is spent immediately as general revenues to fund the federal government.  The Social Security trust fund does not exist, and Social Security “surpluses” are nothing more than an accounting ledger showing that contributions exceeded benefits paid for a given calendar year-- not that the excess was put aside.  Social Security benefits are paid each year from general funds, like other federal programs.  Since these programs and overall spending keep increasing, the government can’t give up any sources of tax revenue.  Allowing people to opt out of Social Security would force the federal government to admit it has been stealing money from Social Security for decades.

The administration speaks of private accounts, but government-managed investment of Social Security funds is not privatization at all…

If the administration truly wants to give people more control over their retirement dollars, why not simply reduce payroll taxes and let them keep their own money to invest privately as they see fit?  This is the true private solution.

Your money has never been safe in the government’s hands, and it never will be…

[Well, that’s going a bit too far, Congressman Paul.  Social Security is a successful program.  People simply do not save for their retirement, and because of Social Security there is much less poverty among the elderly.  The program could have continued indefinitely if George Bush hadn’t given away so many tax cuts to the obscenely wealthy and hadn’t gone galumphing around the globe starting expensive wars

When we had a surplus, under Bill Clinton, the government had started paying off the Reagan/Bush debt, which would have left us in a good position to start borrowing again when the baby boomers begin to retire.  As to forcing real cuts in spending, I couldn’t agree more.  Let’s start by getting out of the war business.—Caro]

Believe George Bush at your own peril, America.
The New York Times

Chile's Retirees Find Shortfall in Private Plan

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: January 27, 2005

SANTIAGO, Chile - Nearly 25 years ago, Chile embarked on a sweeping experiment that has since been emulated, in one way or another, in a score of other countries. Rather than finance pensions through a system to which workers, employers and the government all contributed, millions of people began to pay 10 percent of their salaries to private investment accounts that they controlled.

Under the Chilean program - which President Bush has cited as a model for his plans to overhaul Social Security - the promise was that such investments, by helping to spur economic growth and generating higher returns, would deliver monthly pension benefits larger than what the traditional system could offer.

But now that the first generation of workers to depend on the new system is beginning to retire, Chileans are finding that it is falling far short of what was originally advertised under the authoritarian government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

For all the program's success in economic terms, the government continues to direct billions of dollars to a safety net for those whose contributions were not large enough to ensure even a minimum pension approaching $140 a month. Many others - because they earned much of their income in the underground economy, are self-employed, or work only seasonally - remain outside the system altogether. Combined, those groups constitute roughly half the Chilean labor force. Only half of workers are captured by the system.

Even many middle-class workers who contributed regularly are finding that their private accounts - burdened with hidden fees that may have soaked up as much as a third of their original investment - are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system.

Dagoberto Sáez, for example, is a 66-year-old laboratory technician here who plans, because of a recent heart attack, to retire in March. He earns just under $950 a month; his pension fund has told him that his nearly 24 years of contributions will finance a 20-year annuity paying only $315 a month.

"Colleagues and friends with the same pay grade who stayed in the old system, people who work right alongside me," he said, "are retiring with pensions of almost $700 a month - good until they die. I have a salary that allows me to live with dignity, and all of a sudden I am going to be plunged into poverty, all because I made the mistake of believing the promises they made to us back in 1981."…

Washington Post

Bush Faces New Skepticism From Republicans on Hill

By Mike Allen
Friday, January 28, 2005; Page A01

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va., Jan. 27 -- When President Bush flies to this Allegheny mountain resort Friday to meet congressional Republicans, he will encounter a party far less malleable and willing to follow his lead than it has been for the past four years.

Bush is accustomed to getting his way with Congress and finished his first term without suffering a major defeat. But mid-level and rank-and-file Republicans have begun to assert themselves on issues including intelligence reform, immigration and a major restructuring of Social Security, the centerpiece of his second-term agenda…

The New York Times

Little Black Lies

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 28, 2005

Social Security privatization really is like tax cuts, or the Iraq war: the administration keeps on coming up with new rationales, but the plan remains the same. President Bush's claim that we must privatize Social Security to avert an imminent crisis has evidently fallen flat. So now he's playing the race card.

This week, in a closed meeting with African-Americans, Mr. Bush asserted that Social Security was a bad deal for their race, repeating his earlier claim that "African-American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people." In other words, blacks don't live long enough to collect their fair share of benefits.

This isn't a new argument; privatizers have been making it for years. But the claim that blacks get a bad deal from Social Security is false. And Mr. Bush's use of that false argument is doubly shameful, because he's exploiting the tragedy of high black mortality for political gain instead of treating it as a problem we should solve…

First, Mr. Bush's remarks on African-Americans perpetuate a crude misunderstanding about what life expectancy means. It's true that the current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years - but that doesn't mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die after collecting only a few years' worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks' low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years - not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men.

Second, the formula determining Social Security benefits is progressive: it provides more benefits, as a percentage of earnings, to low-income workers than to high-income workers. Since African-Americans are paid much less, on average, than whites, this works to their advantage.

Finally, Social Security isn't just a retirement program; it's also a disability insurance program. And blacks are much more likely than whites to receive disability benefits…

Internet Weekly Report

The New York Times

For Democrats, Social Security Becomes a Defining Test

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: January 30, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 - When Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, unveiled his top 10 legislative priorities earlier this week, the issue that will dominate the Republican-controlled Congress in 2005 - Social Security - was not on the list. But that does not mean Democrats are uninterested.

In fact, Social Security - or, more precisely, beating back President Bush's plan to partly privatize it - is the Democrats' most important priority this year. With the White House and Congress firmly in Republican hands, Social Security has emerged as a make-or-break issue for Democrats, who see confronting the president as politically crucial.

If they can convince Americans that Mr. Bush is trying to dismantle the 70-year-old program, they will have a rallying cry to re-energize them after their bruising losses in November. A victory on Social Security would embolden them to challenge the White House on other issues, like the president's effort to cap jury awards in medical malpractice cases. And they would be strengthened for 2006 and the midterm elections, when the party in power typically loses seats…

The Democratic whip, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, calls Social Security "the most unifying issue you can imagine," and to demonstrate that unity, Senate Democrats staged a one-sided hearing over the issue on Friday. A collection of senators, all Democrats, heard from Social Security employees who said they had been pressured to sell the White House plan, and from James Roosevelt Jr., former official of the Social Security Administration and grandson of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who created the program in 1935.

The session, packed with Capitol Hill aides in the audience to make it look crowded, was conveniently held on a day when most Republicans were far away, at a retreat in West Virginia. One Democrat after another lambasted the president's plan. "A tragic mistake," said Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota. A plot to sacrifice the financial security of retirees, said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, "so that more equity traders can buy summer homes in the Hamptons."…

[“[P]acked with Capitol Hill aides in the audience to make it look crowded”?  Do you think the Republicans have never used such a tactic?  Do you think any reporter has ever used that phrase about Republican audience packing?—Caro]

Some see Democrats taking a page from the House Republicans of a decade ago, who stood firm against President Bill Clinton when he called for a government-created universal health care program and who then rode that issue to victory in the 1994 midterm elections…

Message passing around the Internet

DEAR ABBY,

My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit card bills and at the end of the month, if I try to pay them off, he shouts at me, saying I am stealing his money.

He says pay the minimum and let our kids worry about the rest, but already we can hardly keep up with the interest.   Also he has been so arrogant and abusive toward our neighbors that most of them no longer speak to us.

The few that do are an odd bunch, to whom he has been giving a lot of expensive gifts, running up our bills even more.

Also, he has gotten religious in a big way, although I don't quite understand it. One week he hangs out with Catholics and the next with people who say the Pope is the Anti-Christ. And now he has been going to the gym an awful lot and is into wearing uniforms and cowboy outfits, and I hate to think what that means. Finally, the last straw. He's demanding that before anyone can be in the same room with him, they must sign a loyalty oath.

It's just so horribly creepy!

Can you help?

Signed, Lost in DC

Dear Lost:

Stop whining, Laura. You can divorce the jerk any time you want. The rest of  us are stuck with him for four more years!

fighting poverty ought to include saving Social Security from the right-wing crazies.
Washington Post

Congressional Republicans Agree to Launch Social Security Campaign

By Mike Allen
Monday, January 31, 2005; Page A04

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. -- Congressional Republicans, after three months of internal debate, this weekend launched a months-long campaign to try to convince constituents that rewriting the Social Security law would be cheaper and less risky than leaving it alone, as the White House opened a campaign to pressure several Senate Democrats to support the changes.

The Republicans left an annual retreat in the Allegheny Mountains with a 104-page playbook titled "Saving Social Security," a deliberate echo of the language President Bill Clinton used to argue that the retirement system's trust fund should be built up in anticipation of the baby boomers' retirement.

The congressional Republicans' confidential plan was developed with the advice of pollsters, marketing experts and communication consultants, and was provided to The Washington Post by a Republican official. The blueprint urges lawmakers to promote the "personalization" of Social Security, suggesting ownership and control, rather than "privatization," which "connotes the total corporate takeover of Social Security." Democratic strategists said they intend to continue fighting the Republican plan by branding it privatization, and assert that depiction is already set in people's minds.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plans to say Monday in a "prebuttal" to President Bush's State of the Union address that her party will not "let a guaranteed benefit become a guaranteed gamble."…

Common Dreams News Center

Published on Wednesday, January 26, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Goodbye New Deal; Hello Raw Deal
by Karen Dolan

In the wake of somewhat of an uproar from progressives, Democrats and even some Republican leaders, President George W. Bush is now backing away from saying that Social Security faces a “crisis.” He has toned down the rhetoric and now refers to a slightly less ominous significant “problem” when he refers to the system that keeps millions of elderly Americans out of poverty.

Let’s get some perspective: Many economists, notably those at the Center on Economic and Policy Research and the Congressional Budget Office, have made it clear that Social Security will remain sound, at least until 2052. Even after that date, the program will still be able to pay out benefits at least equivalent, even adjusted for inflation, to those being distributed today. Indefinitely. With no change whatsoever. The reality is that Social Security is the most financially sound today than it has been since its conception 70 years ago…

So, why is this administration focusing on the issue, initially as a “crisis” and at least as a major “problem”? Because the radically conservative powers-that-be see the opportunity to dismantle the New Deal that brought the Democrats into power for many of the last 70 years. It’s part of this administration’s goal and ideology, to reverse the New Deal and replace it with a system driven by the conservative ideology of privatization to support business and a failed “trickle-down” economic theory. They wish to a shred the social safety net that has enhanced the quality of life in our country for most of the 20th century. Privatization, even partially, of the Social Security program is a boon for Wall Street that poses great risks and increases the likelihood of a fall into poverty for retiring Americans.

The only conceivable way that Bush’s dream of maximizing the benefits of his policies to corporations and the wealthiest Americans on the backs of the majority of our middle class and working poor families can succeed is through perpetuating the myth of crisis and manufactured fear and confusion. This is the hallmark of the current administration. This is a calculated and politically savvy move to continue a rule of coercion by fear…

As citizens who care not only about our futures and the futures of our children and grandchildren, but about maintaining the integrity of this society as one which cares for its most vulnerable and its elderly, we can’t bow to fear and inflated rhetoric that causes people to support policies which run counter to reality and to the interest of Americans. We must not accept a Raw Deal in exchange for the New Deal…

Stealing from old people isn’t exactly a new idea.
Los Angeles Times

January 30, 2005

They Invested Years in Private Accounts
Conservatives who want to alter Social Security have long worked to nudge public opinion. Bush will likely advance the cause this week.

By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Back in 1997, proponents of overhauling Social Security met with the man who would become their most powerful convert: Texas Gov. George W. Bush, whose presidential ambitions were beginning to gel.

The governor dined with Jose Piñera, architect of Chile's 1981 shift from government pensions to worker-owned retirement accounts, in a meeting that helped bring Bush a big step closer to embracing a similar plan for Social Security in his emerging presidential platform.

"I think he wanted to support the idea but needed to be convinced," said Edward H. Crane, president of the libertarian Cato Institute, who was at the dinner. "I really think Jose convinced him."

This week, President Bush's plan to allow younger workers to divert Social Security taxes into personal investment accounts will be a centerpiece of his State of the Union address and a barnstorming tour of the country. It is a tough sell to an uncertain public, but Bush has a secret weapon: A generation of free-market conservatives like Crane and Piñera has been laying the groundwork for this debate…

Now, Bush is drawing on a deep reservoir of resources — including policy research, ready-to-hire experts and polling on how to discuss the issue — that conservatives have created over the last 20 years…

BuzzFlash.com

January 31, 2005

"Everything is at Stake" in Social Security Fight

New MoveOn Ads Reaching Media, Congress and the Public with Focused Message

In a phone conference today with progressive news sites and bloggers, MoveOn.org announced the launch of new hard-hitting TV and print ads on Social Security, the methodology behind those ads, and the ways Democrats can win this fight.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo discussed the political and policy landscape of the Social Security fight, and MoveOn.org Executive Director Eli Pariser discussed the grassroots plan…

[Well, I guess I’m not progressive, a news site, or a blogger, because I wasn’t invited to participate in this phone conference.  Please join with me in protesting to MoveOn.org their continuation of support to the mainstream media—they keep putting money in the pockets of Rupert Murdoch, General Electric, and Disney, whose media outlets are mere scribes for the administration.  Not to mention their willingness to denigrate every Democrat while seldom reporting Republican wrongdoing.

MoveOn.org should be putting its money into truth-telling media, not those that pass on the administration’s lies to the American people.  Click here for their forum, and scroll down to rate and respond to the thread I started, below.  Make your voice heard.—Caro]

Why are you supporting the mainstream media

I take serious exception to your continued financial support of the mainstream media, the same media that profit from Republican administrations and even profit from war.  The same media that denigrate liberals and seldom report wrongdoing by conservatives.

You should be putting the funds you raise into independent media that tell the truth, and that call this administration to account.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

This is what you voted for, America!
Washington Post

Cutting Out the Poor

By William Raspberry
Monday, January 31, 2005; Page A21

I've been talking to Peter Edelman, a Georgetown University law professor who is thoughtful, liberal, incredibly decent -- and alarmed over the national budget President Bush will shortly propose.

"For virtually all of my adulthood," he said, "America has had a bipartisan agreement that we ought to provide some basic framework of programs and policies that provide a safety net, not just for the poor but for a large portion of the American people who need help to manage.

"There've been exceptions -- the first Reagan term with David Stockman, the brief ascendancy of Newt Gingrich -- but while we've argued about the specifics, the basic framework has been there.

"With this budget, the basic framework is being dismantled."

Before you dismiss it as partisan hyperbole, hear Edelman's specifics: The basic structure of Social Security is under attack (on the grounds that the program is in crisis, though most respected economists say it isn't). Pell Grants for college tuition are on the cutting block. So are Section 8 housing vouchers (which started under Richard Nixon) and food stamps. Programs that have offered some protection for people in the lower third of the economy are under threat of evisceration…

[As I’ve said before and will keep saying, we all pay for poverty, one way or another.  We pay by having a living wage included in the prices of the products we buy, or we pay extra taxes to support the working poor, or we pay by having to step over the bodies of those who die in the streets, which is where the Bush administration is taking us.  I say we should pay for a living wage in the prices of products.  Then, if a product is too expensive, it deserves to lose in the marketplace.—Caro]

Congressional Research Service

Estimated Effect of Price-Indexing Social Security Benefits on the Number of Americans 65 and Older in Poverty