Reply #23: Rightwing FOOLS. In 2001, EVEN BUSH decided his SS plan was stupid. [View All]

[LynnTheDem]

2001:

Commission Impossible:
Why Bush is abandoning Social Security reform

So when Bush became the latest Republican to back away from the commission, its critics were ecstatic. For months they had warned that conservative-style reform would require either unpopular tax increases or equally unpopular cuts in benefits.

Now it looked like the White House had come to the same conclusion. "They're essentially coming up with a way for not to be tied to what they produce, so that he can't be attacked," crowed Hans Riemer, an analyst with Campaign for America's Future (CAF). "They clearly miscalculated the politics of it," says the DNC's Kavanaugh. "I think they're rethinking the entire proposition."

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V12/22/confessore-n.html

2002

Social Security In The 2002 Elections:
Candidates Won By Renouncing Privatization

The conservative crusade to "privatize" Social Security played an important role in the 2002 election -- but not in the way that most supporters of this radical idea might have hoped. After more than a decade of aggressive marketing by right-wing interest groups, this was the first national election in which the privatizers might have gotten their dream scenario: a political debate over specific plans put forward by a sitting President -- and embraced by many in the House and Senate -- for diverting Social Security taxes and cutting benefits in order to fund private stock market accounts.

The debate, however, turned into a rout. The privatizers, when challenged, changed their colors and fled the field. Conservative politicians with long and specific records of support for Social Security privatization suddenly decided to denounce the whole idea in their re-election campaigns. A special Republican Campaign Committee task force instructed candidates there was no way to win votes with the Bush Social Security plan.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6717

But bush no longer has to care about the voters, and he wants to send a "bushel of money" to Wall Street.

WAKE UP, AMERICA.