May 4, 2005
AFTER '06 IT ONLY TAKES ONE TO TANGO (via John Resnick):
Straight Talk on Social Security (Neil Cavuto, May 03, 2005, Fox News)
A Democratic congressman talked to me after seeing my interview with New York's Charlie Rangel on the issue of Social Security."You don't understand, Neil," he said. "This Social Security issue is our party's issue. A Democratic president came up with it. Who the hell is a Republican president to destroy it?"
"But it's broke," I say.
"I know," he shoots back. "But there's no politically wise way to fix it."
He's brutally blunt and he's brutally aware the president has called Democrats' bluff:
They wanted the rich to get less. Under the president's plan, the rich will get less.
They wanted something close to "means-testing." Under the president's plan, those with means are tested.
They wanted the poor protected. Under the president's plan, they're more than protected.
Yet with each overture — with each bow to his opponents — his opponents bow out.
Democrats will never have a better opportunity to get a plan they can live with (and take some credit for), but they're blowing it. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 4, 2005 8:21 PM
Mr. Judd;
Note that the Democratic Party Congress-critter is admitting that fixing a government program so that it works is not, of itself, politically wise. Does that not just sum up the essential hollowness of Democratic Party ideology?
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at May 4, 2005 9:19 PMAbsolutely.
Posted by: oj at May 4, 2005 9:27 PMThe affluent elderly and those who will be make up a significant voting bloc. Any direct means-testing is doomed to failure at the ballot box.
The only way around this is a return to the Townsend Plan, where each recipient gets an identical check. We can end the Social Security apparatus, and the incredibly regressive FICA tax, (which if I have to move to Jacksonville will become a major burr up my derriere in the immediate future), by merely moving to an NST with the national pension system being merely another transfer payment. No fund, no privatization, no nothing.
Posted by: bart at May 5, 2005 8:16 AMbart:
They don't think they're rich, so it's easy enough to trick them into means-testing.
Posted by: oj at May 5, 2005 8:21 AMThey are not arithmetically-illiterate so they know that if $40,000 in pensions makes them lose a part of their SS benefits that they are being penalized. My mother can't balance a checkbook or read a map to save her life but even she understands how the taxation of SS benefits for people over a certain income impacted on her.
It is just another plan for government to screw the middle-class taxpayer who saved his whole life to have a decent retirement.
Posted by: bart at May 5, 2005 11:07 AMbart:
Seniors aren't affected and the young have no idea how huge their 401ks, private accounts, and home equity will be by the time they retire. The middle class is who needs to be screwed here.
Posted by: oj at May 5, 2005 1:00 PM