Quote:
Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Raise the retirement age. Means testing. Reduce benefits growth, or make the benefit 95% now. These things should be on the table and should be getting discussed. Instead, what's happened is that Bush has made PSRs the centerpiece of every discussion -- and the way he posits the discussion, they are free from any risk (because all investments in the stock market are, right?), and we don't need to consider the cost (because hey, what's another few trillion in borrowings -- especially if they mostly happen after his term ends?). So, he puts it to the Dems to say "no, we should cut benefits" -- because the Bush plan would never, ever need a cut in benefits because we can just borrow the money and rely on the guaranteed returns of the stock market.
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Well, he who gets off his ass to speak first tends to get to set the initial terms of the debate. Honestly, though, I don't see why Bush positing PSRs has rendered the Dems incapable of suggesting anything else, discussing the cons thereof in terms other than "Scare tactic!" or otherwise sucking it up and acknowledging that of the various variables (amount of benefit, universiality of benefit, age of retirement, amount &/or source of contributions) something has to give (and hopefully acknowledging that, of those, the amount &/or source of contributions is probably the least flexible for all the demographic reasons giving us the problem in the first place).
Had Ted Kennedy been on MTP this weekend acknowledging "yeah, there's fucking trouble brewing, it is a crisis, and it's a crisis right now just like discovering an asteroid that is 99% certain to destroy the earth in 50 years is a crisis right now, because it's gonna take some serious time to figure out how to fix it and put that plan into operation. But what's been suggested isn't the way to fix it, here is why it doesn't fix it, and you may not want to hear what will fix it but we're not gonna insult your intelligence and lie to you and so here it is: ________," I'd have been pleased as a pig in muck even if his suggestion for fixing it was "let's raise taxes on today's younger workers who haven't even been able to afford to buy houses like their parents could, so we can maintain benefit levels for their parents, and then phase in reduced benefits that will hit just when they retire so they're screwed after they've paid for everyone else to live on (relative) easy street," because that would have been an honest suggestion and we'd have a debate on our hands. Instead, he said "there's no problem, BUSH LIED just like Iraq" and "the [nonexistent] problem would be solved by rolling back 1/3 of Bush's tax cuts [which would make sense only if he was suggesting re-raising those taxes as (flat or regressive) SS payroll taxes, unless he's thinking of a rather bigger structural overhaul of the SS system than even Bush is]."
BR(Tim Russert did sort of made him look like an ass - I heart Tim Russert)C
