EDITORIAL
February 11, 2006
Back door 'reform'
Bush gunning for Social Security in 2007 budget
The one good thing about the sneaky business President Bush buried in his new budget proposal is that it was dead on arrival Monday in a Congress facing mid-term elections.
Not that it should take re-election worries for a majority of lawmakers to distance themselves from the president's back-door assault on Social Security. His budget includes provisions that would kick-start private accounts in 2010, shifting $700 billion of the program's revenues to pay for them through the first seven years. Including the measure is Bush's way of telling his congressional base to nudge the issue out into the open because he's locked and loaded for the kill shot.
This president makes no secret of his disdain for federal social programs. And give him credit -- when he sets his crosshairs on a target, he doesn't quit until he's made the kill (unless of course it's Osama bin Laden). In his state of the union speech a few days ago, Bush chided Congress for not taking up his plan to privatize Social Security last year, a deceitful calculation. Most Americans listening to the speech wouldn't know that he never submitted legislation for Congress to consider. In a more conciliatory tone, which seemed to acknowledge the unpopularity of his so-called reform and his intention to drop it for now, Bush called for a bipartisan commission to consider the impact of baby-boom retirees on Social Security, Medicare and other federal programs.>snip
It's a clever but hostile scheme that pretends to (using the president's word) "save" Social Security. But the program is not in near danger of insolvency and won't be in the long term with sensible and relatively minor tweaks. It would be a more vulnerable target for dismantling -- social conservatives have despised it since its New Deal creation -- if Bush gets his way in using the private accounts as a means to recalculate benefits.>more
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