Posted on 04/29/2005 10:29:06 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Democrats have good reason to be aghast at President Bush's new proposal for Social Security. Someone has finally called their bluff.
They tried yesterday to portray him as just another cruel, rich Republican for suggesting any cuts in future benefits, but that's not what the prime-time audience saw on Thursday night. By proposing to shore up the system while protecting low-income workers, Mr. Bush raised a supremely awkward question for Democrats: which party really cares about the poor?
For decades Democrats have pointed to Social Security as a triumph of communal generosity, proof that Americans (or at least non-Republican Americans) will work together to make sure that no widow is reduced to eating cat food. The program has been wonderful for liberals' self-esteem. What it has actually done for the poor is another matter.
It's true, as Democrats love to point out, that the poverty rate among the elderly has declined from 35 percent a half-century ago to 10 percent today. But when you consider how much money is being taken out of Americans' paychecks - most workers now pay more to Social Security than to the I.R.S. - you're entitled to wonder why there are any poor widows remaining.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Dear Mr. Prez:
Got my Soc Sec statement the other day. Saw how much I have paid in over the years.
Please send me a check for that amount plus interest (compounded annually at the CPI rate will be just fine). Then you stop the deductions from my paycheck and I will make no further claim on the system. OK?
Luv ya! Thanks.
BEN
If Clinton or Kerry had tried the same thing the Right would be in an Outrage, calling for impeachment.
But when Bush wants to implement the World's largest wealth distribution plan since the Russian Revolution Conservatives seem more than willing to hop on the train headed to the death camp.
Now the Liberals are portraying the rich as the victims! WOW!!!
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
The only difference between Clinton, Kerry, and Bush is, Clinton and Kerry would raise taxes, while Bush has been cutting them.
I've been around a few years, and in all my days, I have never seen the Democrats this far off the beating trail. They are offering nothing to the important debates of our time. All they are offering is cute metaphor's, and hateful rhetoric.
Since the 2000 Election the Democrats have been blinded by their belief that all close calls go their way, and in 2000 they didn't get their way. Since then it's been nothing but obstructionism and hate speech from them.
Since 9/11, they have seen the leadership George W. Bush has provided and they see their only hope for regaining power is to smear and slander President Bush at every opportunity and to hell with what's best for the Nation.
The Democrat Party has been taken over by the Far Left and until they wise up and distance themselves from the Michael Moore's and MoveOn.org, they can plan on being in the Minority for decades to come
Yes, the world is upside down! Liberals protecting the rich and President Bush punishing people that work hard by enacting a massive redistribution of wealth.
What next? Will the President propose we spend 750 billion on a Socialized Drug Plan?
What a deal. He cut's my taxes and robs my Social Security!
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Actually Bush called their bluff and held his ground on private accounts, but you knew that already, but decided to go on, IMO, a knee jerk rant anyway.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
If you believe anyone has ever taken out of SS what they've paid in since SS was invented, you're fooling yourself. No one who is capable of investing in their retirement should solely depend on SS.
There's no need to excerpt the NY Times. Some folks refuse to register with the Times. This is Tierney's best OpEd since he started writing them this month.
Democrats have good reason to be aghast at President Bush's new proposal for Social Security. Someone has finally called their bluff.
They tried yesterday to portray him as just another cruel, rich Republican for suggesting any cuts in future benefits, but that's not what the prime-time audience saw on Thursday night. By proposing to shore up the system while protecting low-income workers, Mr. Bush raised a supremely awkward question for Democrats: which party really cares about the poor?
For decades Democrats have pointed to Social Security as a triumph of communal generosity, proof that Americans (or at least non-Republican Americans) will work together to make sure that no widow is reduced to eating cat food. The program has been wonderful for liberals' self-esteem. What it has actually done for the poor is another matter.
It's true, as Democrats love to point out, that the poverty rate among the elderly has declined from 35 percent a half-century ago to 10 percent today. But when you consider how much money is being taken out of Americans' paychecks - most workers now pay more to Social Security than to the I.R.S. - you're entitled to wonder why there are any poor widows remaining.
As a poverty-fighting program, Social Security is woefully inefficient because most of the money goes to people who aren't poor. It would take just 20 percent of what Social Security dispenses to move every elderly American out of poverty, according to June O'Neill, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office.
Social Security has an image as a progressive program because low-income workers get back bigger monthly checks, relative to their salaries, than high-income workers do. They're also more likely to get disability benefits.
But they lose out in other ways. They tend to start working and paying taxes at a relatively young age because they don't go to college, but then end up collecting benefits for fewer years because their life expectancy is shorter. They're more likely to be unmarried, making them ineligible for benefits earned by a spouse.
"The amount of income-related redistribution in Social Security is a lot less than people think," said Jeffrey Liebman, a Harvard economist and a former official in the Clinton administration. "If you get the details right, you can design a personal-account retirement system in which groups with high risks of poverty in old age come out at least as well as with the current system."
So why are his fellow Democrats so dead set against it? Their usual answer has been that any move to privatization would doom the poor along with the whole Social Security program. If you let the middle and upper classes opt out and finance their own retirement, the argument has gone, there will be no political support for even the modest subsidies that Social Security now provides to low-income workers - just look at what Republicans did to welfare and public housing programs.
But the elderly poor are different from the younger poor. For one thing, they're more likely to vote, a fact not lost on even the most hardhearted Republican. They also arouse much more public sympathy. Kicking 25-year-olds off welfare was popular because it was thought to be good for them. Nobody claims that forcing that widow to eat cat food will build character.
That's why even the most ardent free-marketeers are not trying to eliminate the safety net for the elderly. The libertarians at the Cato Institute are trying to strengthen it with a proposal that has been introduced by Republicans in Congress. If your individual account left you with a paltry pension, their plan would guarantee you a subsidy to lift you above the poverty line - and well above what many retirees are now getting from Social Security.
Democrats like to portray Mr. Bush as King George or Marie Antoinette. But on Thursday night, when he promised to improve benefits for the poor while limiting them for everyone else, he sounded more like Robin Hood, especially when he rhapsodized about poor people getting a chance to build up assets that they could pass along to their children.
It was the kind of talk you might expect to hear from a Democrat, except that Democrats don't talk about much these days except the glories of the New Deal. They know that Social Security doesn't even have the money to sustain a program that leaves millions of elderly people in poverty. But it's their system, and they're sticking to it.
E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com
Like it or not, Social Security is going nowhere. So stop whining about wealth redistribution, and stop whining about the President's plan. The bottom line is that the President's plan at least helps make the system solvent, so that our paychecks won't get further raped than they already are. And at least we'd have personal accounts under this system- play your cards right with those and you make a solid net gain out of this reform.
Yes, it sucks that we have Social Security to begin with. Yes, it sucks that we can't eliminate it entirely or enact something like the Cato Institute plan. Yes, it sucks that we can't just enact the Bush plan without progressive indexing. But the fact of the matter is that we don't have a big enough majority to shove a Social Security revolution through Congress, because we've got too many RINOs like Olympia Snowe who hate Social Security reform to begin with. We're better off taking what we can get right now, and this bill is solid- we get PRAs, and 70% of the solvency problem is dealt with.
Give it a few days and Warren Buffet will be completely against the idea. The same idea he was for a few years ago.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
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