I think Rove's internal polls are telling Bush something that the media would like to ignore. A Republican victory in November.
Just roll whatever amount of money workers up to the age of 50 have contributed into SS into a private IRA or 401(k) plan and repeal the payroll tax.
a bad idea to float this idea before the elections. very bad.
A government agency, or even a private mutual fund like PIMCO, would be free to offer a fund that offered the low return exactly patterned after the present SS fund. But account holders would also be allowed to invest in qualifying funds that invested in large baskets of securities. At worse, people would get only as much in retirement than is presently promised.
What's amazing about the Social Security issue is that the "do nothing" position remains a commonly adopted political posture despite the publicly available evidence of the costs of delaying action.
Certain conclusions are inescapable, by the numbers alone:
1) The problem isn’t going to go away.
2) Every year of delay makes the situation worse.
3) When action does inevitably have to occur, those who continually downplayed the need for action won't appear very smart or very responsible.
Just a few tidbits, which people are free to look up in the Trustees' reports for themselves:
-- Under current estimates, Social Security’s expenditures will surpass tax revenues by 2017.
-- Even if every conceivable demographic and economic variable breaks in one direction, this date won't slip much. A stochastic analysis shows a 95 % chance that the permanent deficits will begin somewhere between 2013 (the 2.5th percentile) and 2022 (the 97.5th percentile.)
-- This year the Trustees’ estimate of the total Social Security shortfall is $13.4 trillion. The Trustees started publishing estimates of the shortfall in 2003. In just the past three years, this estimate has grown from $10.5 trillion to $13.4 trillion, mostly due to the loss of time.
-- The projected 75-year deficit is already now much bigger than the one that confronted the Greenspan Commission in a "crisis atmosphere" in 1981-83 -- yet some say there's no problem now.
-- In the 1991 Trustees’ report, the date of first deficits was projected as 2017 – exactly the same as predicted today. The lack of net movement in the date since 1991 means that we’ve now frittered away 15 of the 26 years of lead time we had then, though nothing has happened to suggest that the situation will be any better. If the Trustees really were overstating the problem, then it would grow more distant in later reports as actual data gradually replaces the projections. In reality, the opposite has happened: the Intermediate estimates in use since 1983 have been, on balance, somewhat too optimistic.
The bottom line is that delay is a very costly proposition for our children and grandchildren. Those who downplay the problem, and who suggest that reform isn’t necessary, are badly disconnected from the factual evidence, and will likely be badly embarrassed by future events (providing that anyone bothers to check people's past utterances, of course).
Where did they get this info? Did W come right out and say it?
>...in part because of concerns among Republicans that the unpopular plan would...
Wow, no bias here!
Here's thought. Get someone to figure out how much money the average American would have made/saved under the original Bush plan five years ago vs. what was made under the current plan. I've love to see the diffence. I bet it would make a great point.
WTF - this president is out of touch ...