Bush's plan to remake Social Security: It isn't social and it isn't secure

[tk2kewl]

Social Security and the oxymorons
Marie Cocco
February 8, 2005

As the year began, I said there were only two things Americans really needed to know about President George W. Bush's plan to remake Social Security: It isn't social and it isn't secure.

Now add two more truisms: It doesn't fix Social Security's finances. And it's not (really) your money.

The administration's habit of pumping up legitimate policy concerns into hyperbolic crises (WMD anyone?) haunts its proposal for Social Security overhaul. The president has warned for months that the program was going bankrupt, that no traditional fixes would shore it up and that creating private accounts would be its salvation.

The private-accounts-as-fiscal-rescue-plan pervaded Bush's rhetoric during his two presidential campaigns and, pretty much, right up until last week.

Then, something extraordinary happened: A "senior administration official" who briefed reporters told the truth. The transfer of payroll tax money into private accounts would in the long term have a "net neutral effect" on Social Security's fiscal situation. A "fair inference," the official said, is that private accounts do not contribute to solving Social Security's coming solvency problems.

So the president's plan does precisely nothing to address the crisis he keeps warning us about.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpcoc084138297feb08,0,5424467.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Frankly, I think we're being enronized.

His plan is to divert funds for social programs into a war fund which has very little regulation, and which almost exclusively goes to Bush-Cheney cronies. Enron used the same method on California. Forced a crisis, used scare-mongering techniques, monopolized the bids and a few people from Texas got a little bit richer.

The scam that keeps on giving.

[tk2kewl]

2. It's the new Ownership Society

Instead of the government collecting taxes, the owners of wealth will collect the taxes. Also known as feudalism.