An embarrassingly stupid question regarding Bush, Social Security

[complain jane]

I'm fairly new to politics, only since Bush have I been actively trying to get involved and so I have an honest question, why does Bush want to take down social security? I mean my own guess is because it's a gov program and it's practically tapped out because he's ransacked it for Iraq. Does he want to ransack what's left now for PNAC - I mean - the Iraq war, and claiming it's "broke" and telling us we now have to invest if we want anything when we retire is his way of getting his hands on what's left because his idiot "war" is out of control?

This really is an honest question.

[Eurobabe]

1. because the financial markets are in the shitter

we are mortgaged to several different countries, the dollar is tanking, and King George needs to reward his Wall Street buds with a fresh injection of new capital. Let's see, did I leave anything out?

Oh yeah, he secretly wants to bankrupt what is left of the middle class.

[Paradise]

4. You've covered it nicely! n/t

[Xipe Totec]

2. He does not want to destroy Social Security

Quoting Hannibal Lechter, "That is incidental".

The objective is to tap a huge revenue stream and direct it to the stock market where brokers can fleece each investor individually, rather than having to deal with one large, fiscally conservative institution. It's part of the Republican mantra of "personal responsibility". Once you take personal control of the account, you have nobody to blame but yourself when you get screwed in the stock market.

[LynnTheDem]

3. When you invest $ on the stock market, you pay BROKER'S FEES.

If SS is "privatized", the Wall Street traders will rake in BILLIONS on broker's fees alone.

Short answer? bush is doing what he does; making the rich richer by stealing from the poor & middle-class.

I've a link explains it all better, lemme go find it...ok, a run-down to date:

Dubya's lie in 1978 about SS going bankrupt by 1988 if it wasn't privatized fell on deaf ears. Good thing for bush, as he was DEAD WRONG. Now he's trying again with the same lie.

http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/midland.html

And it's quite the bushie FLIP-FLOP from 2002;

Social Security In The 2002 Elections:
Candidates Won By Renouncing Privatization

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6717

And a bushie FLIP-FLOP from 2001:

Commission Impossible:
Why Bush is abandoning Social Security reform

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V12/22/confessore-n.html

Dr. Paul Krugman sure makes it easy even for stupid rightwingnuts to understand that in fact bush is just lying -again- when he says Social Security is in "looming danger".

"Privatizing Social Security - replacing the current system, in whole or in part, with personal investment accounts - won't do anything to strengthen the system's finances. If anything, it will make things worse. Nonetheless, the politics of privatization depend crucially on convincing the public that the system is in imminent danger of collapse, that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it.

Projections in a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office say that the trust fund will run out in 2052. The system won't become "bankrupt" at that point; even after the trust fund is gone, Social Security revenues will cover 81 percent of the promised benefits.

The report finds that extending the life of the trust fund into the 22nd century, with no change in benefits, would require additional revenues equal to only 0.54 percent of G.D.P. That's less than 3 percent of federal spending - less than we're currently spending in Iraq. And it's only about one-quarter of the revenue lost each year because of President Bush's tax cuts - roughly equal to the fraction of those cuts that goes to people with incomes over $500,000 a year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/opinion/07krugman.html

Follow the money; who gets rich with bush's lying scheme? Not us. Gee what a surprise.

Report Predicts Deep Benefit Cuts Under Bush Social Security Plan

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/19/politics/19SOCI.html?ex=1103086800&en=02fd1e95887df5be&ei=5070&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=top

And to bush, "SECURITY" is synonymous with Borrow, Speculate and Hope

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/10/opinion/10krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists

So who DOES PROFIT from bush's insane plan? Wall Street, of course! What...did you think multi-millionaire "I don't understand how the poor think" bush actually gives a shit about We the People??? OH GROW UP!

"Oh, it's just another, another bushel of money. The money that's been on the sidelines in the bonds. The money that's in Social Security. Again, I think you will see a certain privatization happen. And again, it's an avalanche of money and there's just so much money on the sidelines. That's why the market has been so strong for months now."

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_12_05_atrios_archive.html#110268339411219288

[No Mandate Here.]

5. No reason to have embarrassment

DU is a college level school of political learning. I am just a "grad student level instructor". There are some very good teachers here. I'll warm up for them.

There has been a movement going for some time, related to and including the Libertarians, with a primary goal of starving the government. This has been championed by Grover Norquist, who is on record as wanting to make the government essentially bankrupt, so it can jettison those troubling, inclusive, New deal commie programs like Social Security and Medicare, and all other forms of "welfare". The end result is supposed to be something very much like where * is aiming us.

The problem is that, within the first two paragraphs of that nettlesome little document called the Constitution, one of the primary goals of this government is to support the "Welfare of its People". Nowhere does it say that we all should support the welfare of the top 1%, which appears to be his aim.

Suddenly, right after the election, Norquist was very visible on TV, talking up the * policies, and this has become a very scary, very real fear for me. With Chicken Little * running around saying the SS sky is falling, Norquist on TV and the talk of * saying he wasn't really elected in 2000, and perhaps trying to steal yet another election, they are working pretty feverishly to ram this through.

Every chance we get, we must try to frame this debate - that SS is not caving in, and the top 1% must share the cost of government. It is an uphill battle, but trends are reasonable. With only 48% approval, * will have some work to do. We must not let him reach his goals.

[BlueEyedSon]

6. I just want to chime in here: Threads like this is why I love DU!

Genuinely informed people explaining the complex issues of the day without spin (and only a little opinion mixed in).... something our media seems incapable of!

[complain jane]

7. Thanks!

This is why I love DU too. Articulate, intelligent & helpful people taking time out of their day to answer something like this for me, speaks volumes about the people on DU and their generosity. Thanks so much for all of the replies.

It always seems like the more stuff I find out about here the more stuff I have to explore & learn about and the more stuff I learn about the more stuff I have to ask about.

[freestyle]

8. Same reason bank robbers rob banks, it's where the money is

The goal of the bush junta is ever increasing transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich. Screwing up Social Security is a great way to do that through management fees, massive borrowing, and the higher interest rates that would inevitably follow. The "ownership society" benefits those who own the most, and really screws those who owe the most.

[SheilaT]

9. It's also important to understand

that Bush and those around him who want to destroy social security really buy into the notion that there are no "deserving poor". If you're poor, if you're out of work, if you don't have good health insurance, if you even have health problems to begin with, then you deserve it. You deliberately made bad choices and it's no one's fault and no one's responsibility but yours.

It's a profoundly anti-Christian point of view, if indeed "Christian compassion" means to care about the poor, the ill, the widow, the orphan, and so on. But modern day Republicans and the fundamentalist right have this belief that they've accomplished everything on their own, with no understanding of how the government has gotten them where they are, from mortgage interest deductions (which fueled the huge home ownership after WWII), farm subsidies, government contracts to companies like Halliburton. No, they're proudly independent and assume that everyone else had exactly the same advantages as they did.

We are rapidly returning to the excesses and income disparities of the Gilded Age, and it's not pretty.

[chuckhoward]

10. The Republicans have opposed Social Security...

...from the beginning of time. They fought it when FDR proposed it, and now with their so-called mandate, (I know, there was no mandate) they will try to end it. Lesson one -- stop referring to the Bush plan as "privatization." It should be referred to as social security abolition. Frame the issue.

Bush will try to accomplish his mission by manufacturing a "crisis." (does that ring any bells????)

Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly blogger, has been all over the "manufactured crisis" issue. Here are links to two of his recent pieces re: " the crisis."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_12/005280.php

and

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_12/005312.php

Finally, the bloggers over at mydd.com have thrown down the gauntlet as well:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/12/21/7316/9018

Letters should be written to all Democratic members of Congress urging them to resist the abolition of Social Security. It was a good idea in the '30s. It's still a good idea.

[BlueEyedSon]

13. If you are rich you deserve it. If you are poor you deserve it. nt

[mslux]

11. Social Security is Healthy and Successful. n/t

[newportdadde]

12. There are a variety of opinions on this ranging from:

1) Republicans and Bush had an agenda to dismantle the New Deal programs, a philisophical belief it shouldn't exist.

2) Bush wants his broker buddies to get rich.

3) My personal opinion - new cash inflow to keep the stockmarket bubble going and moving along in all of its overvalued glory.

Now if it happens how will it play out... will someone come along and let you 'borrow' it for an overpriced house to keep the housing bubble going?

Will your employer come to you and say "Listen Bob your making more now on your SS private fund so we are cutting back your retirement from us."

etc etc.. it will get ugly if it happens.