Posted on 02/08/2006 9:24:57 AM PST by West Coast Conservative
If you read enough numbers, you never know what you'll find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts.
Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.
His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.
If this comes as a surprise to you, have no fear. You're not alone. Bush didn't pitch private Social Security accounts in his State of the Union Message last week.
First, he drew a mocking standing ovation from Democrats by saying that "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security," even though, as I said, he'd never submitted specific legislation.
Then he seemed to be kicking the Social Security problem a few years down the road in typical Washington fashion when he asked Congress "to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby-boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," adding that the commission would be bipartisan "and offer bipartisan solutions."
But anyone who thought that Bush would wait for bipartisanship to deal with Social Security was wrong. Instead, he stuck his own privatization proposals into his proposed budget.
"The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social Security modernization," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an interview Tuesday, but "the president still cares deeply about this."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
When I was born it was ~139 million. In 1950 ~150 million and in 1960 about ~179 million and now there is just too damn many.
Reagan won in two historic landslide victories and didn't have to wait around for votes to be counted multiple times to see if he was the winner. Reagan knew how to lead and govern. The American people loved Reagan and showed it on election day.
Bush just announced the largest budget in US history, spending 66.1% on welfare and entitlements, and only 16.9% on national defense. 20 years ago, Reagan's budget spent 48.6% on welfare and entitlements and 27.6% on national defense. That's roughly 17% LESS spending on welfare/entitlements and 10% MORE spending on national defense, Reagan versus Bush43.
Bush hasn't behaved like a fiscal conservative. Creating a massive prescription drug benefit, increasing funds for the NEA and NPR, nationalizing airport security, signing the anti-free speech McCain-Feingold CFR into law, signing off on McCain's torture bill, advancing backdoor amnesty for illegals, supporting affirmative action before the Supreme Court, signing off on huge farm, energy, and transportation bills and doubling the Education budget. These aren't signs of a conservative POTUS at work.
When Bush took office in 2001, he was handed an economy entering a mild recession, with inflation and interest rates at historic lows. Unemployment was going up, but Bush`s supply side tax cuts did spark the economy following 9-11 and job creation has been good.
In 1981 Reagan was faced with the worst economic times since the Great Depression. Once Reagan's economic recovery tax plan took effect in 1983, inflation, interest rates and unemployment all came tumbling down. While spending, investment and savings took off on a 17 year economic growth boom.
Reagan ran deficits and won the Cold War, rebuilt the military, dismantled the USSR and the communist Eastern Bloc, freeing 500 million people from totalitarianism in the process. Those 1980`s dificits were well worth it. Right now Bush is running an historic $400 billion deficit. But not all those funds are earmarked for the WOT. Two-thirds to three-quarters of that deficit is paying for America's welfare state and the new Bush trillion dollar Medicare Prescription Drug Program.
Interesting arguments. Your perspective is quite different. Might have to rethink the issue. Thanks.
Page 286 of the hardcopy in the Social Security section.
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The President is committed to strengthening the Social Security system and has put forward three goals for any reforms: strengthen the safety net for future generations; protect those who depend on Social Security; and offer every American a chance to experience the opportunity of ownership through voluntary personal retirement accounts.
The President has proposed reforms to address the system’s long-term financial shortfall while making Social Security a better deal for today’s young workers. Under the President’s approach, Social Security would include voluntary personal accounts funded by a portion of workers’ payroll taxes. The 2007 President’s Budget includes the estimated impact from the creation of personal accounts. The accounts will be funded through the Social Security payroll tax. In the first year of the accounts, contributions will be capped at four percent of Social Security taxable earnings, up to a $1,100 limit in 2010, increasing by $100 each year through 2016. The President has also embraced the idea of indexing the future benefits of the highest wage workers to inflation while providing for a higher rate of benefit growth for lower-wage workers. This measure would significantly contribute to the solvency of the system. By adjusting the way benefits are calculated, progressive indexing would eliminate nearly 70 percent of annual cash shortfalls by the end of the Social Security Trustees’ long-range (75 year) valuation period, trending towards greater improvement thereafter. Because progressive indexing would index benefits for lower-wage workers to wage growth, which generally grows faster than inflation, benefits would grow faster than the poverty level. This will keep a greater portion of future seniors out of poverty than today.
By adopting progressive indexing and allowing young workers to create voluntary personal retirement accounts within the Social Security system, the President’s recommendations would provide future seniors with real money instead of the current system’s empty promises. Indexing benefits partially to inflation rather than wages allows the Government to save significant sums in future decades, money that would be used to maintain faster benefit growth for low-income seniors. Without Social Security reform, benefits for future seniors will have to be cut about 30 percent across-theboard.
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I also did a quick search on the Analytical Perspectives document. It mentioned the existance of personal accounts, but had no more details.
My analysis: $1100 is better than nothing, but that's only about one tenth of my total SS (not counting Medicare) taxes. I would like to be able keep more in a personal account. Also, no mention is made of how that money can be invested. Can I put it in stocks, or will I be limited to treasury bonds?
Much more savvy generation than mine was...thank goodness.
You whine about tax cuts after tax cuts (a Bush first term campaign promise) helped this country hold together post 9-11. The President wants to make them permanent, another uphill battle he faces.
You wanna complain about taxes?! Elect a Gore or a Kerry and you'd have something to cry about.
Your war criticism is pathetic. Why don't you just diddy on over to your nearest mosque and sign up? You apparently have given up to the enemy. In the meantime I'll ask you to shut your mouth about the effort our troops are engaged in. Pity they have to risk their lives defending and fighting for somebody who doesn't appreciate it.
There isn't anything wrong with posting infrequently on this forum. My point was and is that you now come here and call the POTUS names. The man who held this country together after the worst attack on US soil in our history.
I think you may well be a sleeper troll.
So lets turn it over to a higher authority for their evaluation.
Pinging the mods. A poster for your evalution.
Don't waste your time with MNJohnnie. Big GOP butt-kisser.
None bigger. I think. ;^)
LOLOL. If he was, he would have been a leader and submitted a REAL, GENUINE proposal to IMMEDIATELY PHASE-OUT Socialist Security. Last year was a golden opportunity - He can't run for re-election again anyway, so he's got nothing to lose! The system doesn't need to be "reformed," we don't need another "bi-partisan" commission. The system needs to be gradually phased out.
I think Bush thought that by pushing for bigger medicare it would have been easier to get SS reform through, but he obviously was wrong.
That would have been my reasoning behind supporting bigger medicare, that is for sure....if I thought it could get me what I really cared about, social security reform.
Young people like myself support having freedom to do with SS money how we want. It is the people in their 60s who do not...and unfortunately, these tend to be liberals who vote.
Mr. Peter,
I do presume you realize that the budget is the primary way in which the president drives his agenda in Congress.
Oh, you didn't? Well, who is the moron then...
It is quite hard to screw up a report on something like this.
It is in the budget for all to see. If Newsweek can be wrong on something like this, they are less professional than a middle school newspaper.
And don't get me wrong, Newsweek has lost a ton of credibility.
But, if they can't even get a basic story like this that any person without much journalistic experience at all should be able to get, then they are the most pathetic publication in the world.
You need to play with a full deck of statistics. When Reagan took office the US population was 227 million and now it is 300 million. A little less than a third more people. If you count the illegals its another 20 million and it would be a third more population. Welfare per recipient is far less than under Reagan. If we had the same Reagan budget in todays economy the deficient would be over a trillion dollars and if we adjusted for inflation it would be over 2 trillion dollars. Per capita spending on domestic programs is less today when everything is considered.
And I am sorry you're such a huge apologizer and sycophant for this President. If you don't like seeing the truth being posted, save yourself the heartburn and don't read my replies.
ps-just what do you mean by, "early dims win"?
I am. OMB.gov has all the relevent statistical data anyone could ever need. Some of it goes back to 1940 and even 1790. It doesn't matter how many people live in America. Its how much money is being spent and on what programs. Right now Bush`s overall spending on welfare and entitlement programs is fast approaching 2/3rds of the entire federal budget. Bush has done a remarkable job in prosecuting the WOT, but he's slacking off on funding for national defense in the budget. The data is quite clear.
>>>>If we had the same Reagan budget in todays economy the deficient would be over a trillion dollars and if we adjusted for inflation it would be over 2 trillion dollars.
LOL And you say I'm not playing with a full deck of statistics. I think I know where you're pulling your data from and its not coming from OMB.gov. Your pulling data from a space called, 'uranus'.
The Marxist Doctrine slips out again. You're only keeping what's yours. Big Brother is not "paying" for them.
If I recall corectly, Bush's talking points for private accounts last year included investment choices similar to the ones Federal Employees have. A limited set of mutual funds, not traded on the open market. I can't find a link to what they were called.
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