Spitzer critical of Bush SS plan - debt incurred would be "astronomical"

[cthrumatrix]

Spitzer critical of Bush SS plan
Spitzer says debt incurred would be "astronomical"

By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
Last Update: 4:01 PM ET Jan. 31, 2005


WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - New York's outspoken Democratic attorney general criticized the Bush administration's plan to create private accounts for Social Security recipients on Monday, saying the proposal would cost the government huge sums of money.


Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat who is seeking the New York governor's mansion, also chided the Bush administration for promoting the Social Security plan when officials "failed to protect investors" from frauds in the investment banking and mutual fund industries.

Bush is pushing a controversial plan that would allow younger workers to divert part of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts.

The debt incurred by the federal government, Spitzer said, would be "simply astronomical." The government would in fact need to borrow as much as $2 trillion over the next decade to continue paying current benefits to retirees, Spitzer said.

Spitzer has made a national name for himself taking on wrongdoers in the financial services industry, and Monday's comments, made in a speech at the National Press Club here, align him squarely with other top Democrats who have criticized Bush's plan.


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http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/print_story.asp?print=1&guid={0A5F056D-07CA-45A9-BBE2-EA39A2643D4B}&siteid=mktw

[NNguyenMD]

1. I can't wait until he's promoted from America's most influential AG to

America's most powerful Governor. He's definitely someone who makes the most from the office he occupies.

[AzDar]

2. We could use many more like him.......n/t

[havocmom]

3. SS ISN'T crashing on its own so the neocons want to 'fix' it to ensure

it costs so much that, with the national debt they are building, the public will be forced to scrap the whole thing or face being taxed out of existence. The rich have been trying to scrap SS since FDR first mentioned the idea! Tell them to roll back the tax cuts, spend with some responsibility (how much $$ unaccounted for in Iraq alone?) and attend to the deficit! Now, there's something to worry about, THE DEFICIT!

Leave Social Security as the insurance against abject poverty in old age that it was intended to be! It was never meant to be an investment, it is insurance!

CEOs need to mind their businesses: look into spending some time and effort on the goods and services they supposedly are in business to produce/provide and let the market actually be based on how they really preform in that endeavor. This corporate game of basing everything they do on how it makes their companies look on paper so they can sell stocks is the root of most evil in the American economy. It is the root of why they want to grab the SS payroll taxes to fluff up their stock sales.

Too many US corporations have already blown the trust of US investors. They are not increasing stock sales like they used to since they have swindled most out of what discretionary investment $$ they had. They need new pockets to pick and they want force investments in stocks from workers' paychecks. It is that simple.

Fuck 'em and use the SS fund the way it is intended. There is no reason to incur more costs to give $$ to stock brokers. There is no payoff in rewarding bad CEOs for continuing their errant ways. It is NOT their $$.

[cthrumatrix]

4. it's not thier money ....does the media ask for ANY accountability?

they let them steal and not return moeny from our contributions.

[mom cat]

9. Social Security was a way of subduing the radical left at the time.

If it is destroyed, I expect that the revolution will not be far behind.

[complain jane]

5. doesn't ANYBODY understand

Bush financially ruined the only businesses he ever ran in the past. Oil business they were, of course.

Arbusto, Spectrum 7, to name two. There might have been more.

Ran them straight into the f*ing ground.

Does ANYBODY understand that this is all he's capable of?

It's mind boggling that anyone anywhere would even remotely consider a plan from him that has anything to do with someone's money.

[twaddler01]

6. too bad

he is the president. He can control a lot of spending...

:argh:

[priller]

7. Except this is not a matter of simple incompetence.

The Bush regime is actively ruining the nations finances in order to justify cutting all social programs, because "we can no longer afford to pay them". Grover Norquist and his band of loonies has been advocating this approach for many years.

THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!

[MasonJar]

8. The neo-cons forgot to understand that the rest of the world will

NOT continue indefinitely buying US debt. It is becoming a dangerous enterprise. It was no fluke that Nobel Prize winning economists joined former ambassadors and generals and scientists in deploring the cabal and its blind, idiotic policies.

[KT2000]

10. Where would we be today if

we already had Bush's privatized social security and people had invested their social security in Enron and World Comm? Where would we be?????

This was what he said at the National Press Club today. He said that Bush wants everyone to invest in a flawed system and Bush denies there are any flaws that need to be fixed.

Spitzer is a hero for our times.

[NYC]

11. I wonder what people outside New York think of Spitzer?

Do people outside New York pay attention to Spitzer?

Please respond.

[Mountainman]

12. No problem says Bush, we don't plan to pay out anyway!

Bush's plan is to kill Social Security, not save it.

No Social Security, no health care, no jobs, no life, die sucker!