Leaked White House Memo Proposes Social Security Price Indexing

[Itsthetruth]

White House Memo Admits Individual Accounts Would Do Nothing to Close the Shortfall

In a White House memo to conservative allies that leaked in early January, Peter Wehner, the White House Director of Strategic Initiatives, acknowledged that individual accounts themselves would do nothing to close the projected Social Security shortfall and that the White House is looking to “price indexing” to close all of the shortfall. Wehner wrote: “If we borrow $1-2 trillion to cover transition costs for personal savings accounts and make no changes to wage indexing, we will have borrowed trillions and will still confront more than $10 trillion in unfunded liabilities.”

Similarly in a December 17 analysis, the Wall Street investment firm Goldman Sachs told its clients that under the proposal the White House is likely to put forward, it is “the switch to price indexing from wage indexing that restores Social Security to solvency, not the implementation of a personal saving account system.”

http://www.cbpp.org/12-17-04socsec.htm#_ftnref2

[CindyDale]

1. Yeah, tie it to the price of gasoline

heh

[denverbill]

2. OK, how about this then?

Don't privatize the f'ing accounts, eliminate the cap on earnings, start taxing dividends and capital gains, and use reasonable estimates for economic growth rather than the anemic predictions they've been using.

Problem solved. Completely.

[Lexingtonian]

4. but dude-

That would be honest economics and utterly lacking in sociopathy. It would be simply immoral.

[denverbill]

6. You've got the philosophy right, but you used big words.

Just call it 'class warfare' and act all horrified anyone would THINK of asking the wealthy to help the lower classes live comfortable lives and retire at a decent age with a decent income.

[sandnsea]

3. memo lays out their strategy

And it is clearly to destroy social security. If we miss that, we lose the fight.

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=371

On Civilized Society
13 February 2005



This morning I ran across a couple of articles that contained reference to the leaked Wehner Memo of Jan 3. While we could be content to argue the facts and figures that make up the amount of a monthly social security check, this memo discloses the truth of the stark reality facing us. It is a truth we had better not ignore. The memo bluntly states Social Security "will be one of the most important conservative undertakings of modern times." Further, that there "is going to be a monumental clash of ideas" and that "At the end of the day, we want to promote both an ownership society and advance the idea of limited government." Finally, for anybody who has followed the Republican fight against social security, it is clear dismantling the program is what they mean when they say "For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win -- and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country."


This is not a fight about whether we'll retire at 65 or 67 or 70. It is not a battle about whether blacks or women are cheated. It is not a battle about whether the youth will get more than they deserve under the current system, as the memo also contends. It is not even a battle to remind people that this is also a program to insure against poverty should one become disabled or the breadwinner should die, although that is important. It is clearly a battle about the "philosophical landscape of the country." It is a battle about who we are as a people. It is a battle about the "Ownership Society" and what it really means.

[whistle]

5. I believe Greenspan admitted that at the congressional....

...committee hearing today when he said and I'm paraphrasing, privatization can only work if there is an increase to net national savings and that would mean then that consumption has to go down relative to income. He admitted that federal deficits cause net national savings to drop. The MSM will claim that Greenspans comments agree with Bush's privatization proposal, but Greenspan did not admit that and in fact when questioned pointed out that fixing Social Security within the present structure will work as long as new entrants into the system have a privatized portion over and above the present structure that forces new net national savings. Greenspan clarified that his choice of net national savings is the same as the more common term net domestic savings.