Recently in Entitlements Category

Does she really think we don't remember how Senator Joe Lieberman (?-Conn.) tried to sabotage Democratic efforts to fight the Bush Administration's horrible Social Security plans?

As Jane Hamsher explains, the answer is "apparently."

Paul Krugman exposes the fuzzy math and lies behind claims that President George W. Bush's latest Social Security proposal is a better deal for the poor than the rich. It is another valuable must-read column.

Let's consider the Bush tax cuts and the Bush benefit cuts as a package. Who gains? Who loses?

Suppose you're a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn't get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won't cut your Social Security benefits.

Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.

Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!

The point is that the privatizers consider four years of policies that relentlessly favored the wealthy a fait accompli, not subject to reconsideration. Now that tax cuts have busted the budget, they want us to accept large cuts in Social Security benefits as inevitable. But they demand that we praise Mr. Bush's sense of social justice, because he proposes bigger benefit cuts for the middle class than for the poor.

No one who adds $2 billion a day to the national debt in order to finance tax cuts for the rich should ever be allowed to claim the populist mantle.

I see our so-called liberal media wasted no time in sucking up to President George W. Bush. Josh Marshall and Sam Rosenfeld explain how gullible reporters got sucked into the misinformation field surrounding this chief executive.

Billmon points us towards this rather troubling picture. As the Guardian describes it:

Africa's tallest mountain, with its white peak, is one of the most instantly recognisable sights in the world. But as this aerial photograph shows, Kilimanjaro's trademark snowy cap, at 5,895 metres (1,934ft), is now all but gone - 15 years before scientists predicted it would melt through global warming, writes Paul Brown.

On second thought, worry is really quite appropriate.

Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler asks a wonderful question of our so-called liberal media: why do they continue to write stories about established facts as if they were just partisan talking points?

He explains yet another example of this error, appearing on the front page of the so-called liberal New York Times:

"KORNBLUT (3/5/05): [T]he personal accounts [that Bush has proposed] would offset a portion of the existing Social Security benefit and, its proponents argue, enhance it. Mr. Bush has proposed letting younger workers divert up to 4 percent of their taxable income into personal accounts—a move that detractors say would cost trillions in transition costs and ruin the underpinnings of the system."

Detractors say that the private accounts “would cost trillions in transition costs?” In fact, Dick Cheney said the same thing four weeks ago, on a major Sunday program. In short, it’s an established fact, disputed by no one—transition costs will run in the trillions. And yet Kornblut, writing for the paper of record, still thinks it’s a point of dispute. Her editors are clueless as well. (emphasis in original)

It is pathetic reporting like this that leads Somerby to point the finger of blame at reporters for why voters are so uninformed about the facts surrounding this important debate.

Rarely has an accusation been aimed at a more deserving target.

As Atrios points out, Paul Begala today on CNN sent a much-needed message to any Democrat who thinks he or she should throw the Republicans a lifeline with a compromise to President George W. Bush's irresponsible Social Security plan:

And yet rumors abound that Democrats, perhaps even former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, will find a compromise that allows Mr. Bush to succeed in privatizing part of Social Security. Look, any Democrat who rescue Mr. Bush's assault on Social Security ought to be defeated in a primary and allowed to begin their own retirement early. 'Nuff said.

One need look no further than this story to understand how Democrats have consigned themselves to the political wilderness: we keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Are we threatening to do so again?

This has not been a good week for Congressional Republicans when it comes to Social Security privatization. Many of their town hall meetings have not gone well. Now some GOPers are desperate to cut a deal to get bipartisan cover for the president's irresponsible proposal.

Some Democrats, regrettably, may be willing to provide Republicans with a last-minute escape hatch. As the Washington Times' John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei explain:

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid has declared that Senate Democrats are united in their opposition to personal accounts carved out of Social Security. That is a deal-killer if true, since as a practical matter the most controversial ideas typically need a supermajority of 60 votes to end filibusters and allow a vote. Despite Reid's assertion, however, several moderate Democrats have not ruled out backing a more modest version of the president's plan.

Despite Reid's assertion, however, several moderate Democrats have not ruled out backing a more modest version of the president's plan.

Some of these centrists, such as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), have been meeting with Republican colleagues to discuss whether there is a middle ground.

Or not.

As Josh Marshall points out:

The real bottom line in this article, however, is the crew of Dems eager to toss a life-line to the president just as the American people are turning hard against phase-out. Take Rep. Shaw's possible compromise deal, as described in the Post: Republicans give Dems some of their add-on accounts and in return the president agrees to phase-out less of Social Security than he initially wanted -- 2 percent of payroll rather than 4 percent.

Such a deal! Republicans at their town halls are getting treated like off-pitch singers on the Gong Show and the Democrats should cut a phase-out deal that gives the president what until a couple months ago was supposed to be all that he wanted (i.e., 2 percent of payroll)?

Whoever these Fainthearted Dems might be, please pass a law barring them from negotiating the price of their next automobile, right? I mean, maybe they think Enron stock is undervalued too and primed for a comeback.

Over on TAPPED, Matthew Yglesias has some wise words for any Democrat who may be considering an attempt to cut a Social Security deal with the White House:

Democrats are winning this fight, and should accept nothing less than surrender. Once the GOP has given up on phasing out the plan, we can either start a serious conversation about finding a balanced approach to Social Security reform, or else move on to addressing more pressing fiscal issues. Until then, trying to compromise with a party that knows no procedural or ethical restraints on its conduct and that's led by a president who's apparently hell-bent on destroying Social Security is a losing deal.

You can think you are cutting a deal -- but history shows that this White House will only use you for political cover before striking the things important to Democrats from the final legislation.

Insanity, as Albert Einstein once explained, is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.

After four years of trying to compromise, it is time for the Democratic Party to oppose.

In today's New York Times, we learned that former advisers to the Swift Boat Veterans for TruthLies have now been hired to go after the AARP because it dares oppose President George W. Bush's irresponsible Social Security privatization scheme.

Perhaps that means we are going to be subjected to more ads like this one, currently running on The American Spectator's web page.

Yes, this is a real ad. It's running right now on the right hand column of the Spectator's web site. Clicking on the ad on the Spectator's web site takes you to the web site of the company that hired the consultants named in the New York Times story.

Josh Marshall has more on this upcoming battle.

Paul Krugman makes an essential observation today, noting that when it comes to tax cuts and Social Security, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is not an impartial fountain of information.

When it comes to these subjects, Greenspan is just another political hack. And Democrats should start pointing that out.

Greenspan made President George W. Bush's irresponsible tax cuts possible. Now, he seeks to provide cover on Social Security. Democrats should stop allowing Greenspan to get away with shilling for the White House.

Over on TAPPED, Matthew Yglesias catches a townhall.com writer comparing Social Security privatization's transition costs with the transition costs of ending slavery.

Really. She does. Star Parker writes:

Am I pushing the envelope too far to suggest that there is common ground between the politics of slavery and the politics of Social Security?

Yglesias does a good job of examining how Social Security privatization and slavery are just a bit different. Just how desperate must privatizers be if they are running talking points like this one up the flagpole?

Is there any limit to the amount of red ink the Bush-Cheney Administration will run up in the pursuit of their ideological goals?

Josh Marshall catches the Vice President in a candor moment: admitting, at least in part, to the huge amount of debt that our nation would need to accumulate in order to fund President George W. Bush's fiscally irresponsible Social Security phase-out plan. As Marshall writes:

As we've noted repeatedly here, the biggest threat to Social Security is our accumulated national debt -- actually, even more our accumulating national debt. If we only had the debt load we have now and weren't adding hundreds of billions of dollars every year because of the president's policies, we could probably grow our way out of it.

In any case, indebtedness is our problem. And Cheney's solution is to borrow many trillions more dollars over the next two or three decades, in addition to our existing structural budget deficits which are likely themselves unsustainable. And he and the White House now admit this will do nothing to improve the financial condition of Social Security.

Following any reasonable calculation the entire debate should end right there -- though I concede that rational calculation ain't what it used to be. (emphasis in original)

This needs to become the most-used phrase in politics: "benefit offset." That's the phrase Bush Administration officials used to describe a little secret in their Social Security partial privatization scheme.

Under the White House Social Security plan, workers who opt to divert some of their payroll taxes into individual accounts would ultimately get to keep only the investment returns that exceed the rate of return that the money would have accrued in the traditional system.

The mechanism, detailed by a senior administration official before President Bush's State of the Union address, would hold down the cost of Bush's plan to introduce personal accounts to the Social Security system. But it could come as a surprise to lawmakers and voters who have thought of these accounts as akin to an individual retirement account or a 401(k) that they could use fully upon retirement.

If a worker sets aside $1,000 a year for 40 years, and earns 4 percent annually on investments, the account would grow to $99,800 in today's dollars, but the government would keep $78,700 -- or about 80 percent of the account. The remainder, $21,100, would be the worker's.

This writer is in favor of adding private accounts to Social Security -- or finding other mechanisms to increase national savings. But he could never support the fiscally irresponsible shell game being proposed by the Bush Administration.

So, after years of Republicans calling their Social Security plans "privatization" or "partial privatization" and talking about diverting payroll taxes into "private accounts," the White House has decreed that we are actually talking about "personal accounts."

And how does our esteemed so-called liberal media handle this Orwellian change in our political lexicon?

As Josh Marshall reports, by quickly moving to comply with the directive. You can almost hear these reporters respond with a resounding "How High!" to the White House's demand that they jump to the new wording. See Marshall's examples here and here.

Liberal media. Yeah. Right.

Update: The esteemed editorial cartoonist Tom Toles puts this into perspective.

The Bull Moose catches a conservative economic leader stumbling head-on into the truth behind President George W. Bush's irresponsible Social Security privatization plan:

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," said Stephen Moore, the former president of Club for Growth, an antitax group. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

The only question now is whether you are going to fall for the Bushies' Orwellian use of our language. Are you going to take more notice of the nice-sounding focus-grouped phrases, or the actual policies behind them?