The L.A. Times had an article out yesterday about President Bush mounting an aggressive campaign to convince the public of something that many Democrats and economists say is mistaken: that the massive government retirement system is hurtling toward disaster. There is also much concern over how to pay for the overall, which would see a 2 trillion dollar gap in payments to current retirees, so much so Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has warned the president about this.
But, as Tom Tomorrow pointed out on his blog, aside from pratical concerns, the fact is many just don't have reason to trust the people pushing for Social Security reform. Why? Because, as conservatives, many of them are against SS, the New Deal, and other government programs. At least the far right Republicans are, and even the others like the Bush admin want to reform such programs to make them more favorable to business (coined "big government conservatism"). The point is, it's hard to trust the sincerity of people in reforming the system when they don't believe the system has a right to exist in the first place.
Monday, December 13, 2004
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3 comments:
Just because it's nuts doesn't mean Bush won't get it passed somehow. See the prior tax cuts and are now mounting deficits. The problem for him is that quite a few Republicans quiver at the thought of borrowing 2 trillion dollars for a program that doesn't even need fixing right away.
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To speak to your point though, I'm not sure what disaster you're referring to. The fact that Social Security is solvent until something like 2042? And investing it in the market is supposed to fix it? This would be the same market that people lost their retirement funds to in the early part of this decade.
I just don't get the fascination with fixing social security right now...except as yet another means to support past and future tax cuts while diminishing the deficit they cause.
Some other articles on this:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2280&e=1&u=/weeklystandard/thecredibilitydeficit
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/weeklystandard/20041214/cm_weeklystandard/republicaninsecurity&e=2&ncid=
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