Bush's Failed Social Security Campaign Cost Taxpayers $2.8 Million

[Hissyspit]

Source: Congress Daily

Bush's Failed Social Security Campaign Cost Taxpayers $2.8 Million
Congress Daily | September 7, 2007 04:54 PM

Congress Daily reports:

Congressional auditors have found that the Bush administration spent an excessive amount in 2005 on a failed campaign to privatize Social Security, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Democrats charged today. The committee released a report by GAO, dated Aug. 10, that says the administration spent at least $2.8 million promoting its Social Security plan. GAO said it does not know the real cost of the campaign because the White House did not fully cooperate with its auditors. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Waxman did not respond to a request today for comment, but in an August 2005 letter requesting the GAO investigation, Waxman wrote: "There is a vital line between legitimately informing the public ... and commandeering the vast resources of the federal government to fund a political campaign for Social Security privatization."

A fact sheet released by the committee highlighted the campaign's cost to taxpayers and the White House's limited cooperation. GAO found President Bush, Vice President Cheney and more than 100 officials from the White House and agencies ... including the Social Security Administration, Treasury, HHS and Labor departments -- spent $1.6 million on 228 public events intended to build public support for privatization. Most costs were for travel. Other expenses included $200,000 for the Treasury Department to create a Social Security Information Center and a Web site promoting the administration plan. Bush, fresh from his 2004 re-election victory, launched the campaign in his 2005 State of the Union address. Afterward, then-Treasury Secretary John Snow kicked off a "60 Stops in 60 Days" tour consisting of well-publicized town hall meetings that ultimately failed to generate much interest in changing Social Security in Congress, even among key Republican lawmakers.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/07/bushs-failed-social-secu_n_63521.html

[Demeter]

1. Put It On The List

sooner or later he'll get indicted for SOMETHING if not everything.

[Faygo Kid]

2. About 1/1,000th the cost of a week in Iraq - about 10 minutes of war

My point is NOT to say that $3 million doesn't matter, but to emphasize the other side of the coin. It puts things in perspective: Nearly $3 million, as opposed to $3 Billion for one week in Iraq. Yet, it's still $3 million of OUR money used against us. It's a miracle that Bush has (so far) lost on Social Security, because he has won on so much else.

They will stop at nothing. Impeach.

[izzie]

3. Time for the crooks to go.

--

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. Shows how this country works, easily fooled by the "threat" of Iraq

but not so easily fooled when it comes their Social Security checks.

[tanyev]

5. Congressman Sam Johnson - "Social Security Central"

I was looking at my congressman's website a couple days ago and noticed he had a very prominent link on his front page to "Social Security Central". Intrigued, I clicked the link and saw many more links to articles and speeches starting in Feb 2005 and ending in July 2005. At which time, my congressman threw in the towel and went back to not giving a rat's a$$. (Republican, of course.)

[kimmylavin]

6. I was going to say...

I was going to say that I was surprised it was so low, but then I saw this line: "GAO said it does not know the real cost of the campaign because the White House did not fully cooperate with its auditors."

Ah. Executive privilege, I suppose?

[robinlynne]

7. He should pay it back personally.

[slipslidingaway]

8. 1 Trillion was added to the SS Trust Fund during the Bush

administration. This is a little off topic, but it would be nice if someone mentioned the mounting debt that will need to be repaid to the trust fund by...the next generation???

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/funds.html

Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Trust Funds, 1957-2006
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4a3.html

[Yupster]

9. Sorry but saying there is $ 2.2 trillion

in the social security trust fund is a joke. That money has been spent on missiles and whatever else the government spends its money on.

Supposedly the general budget now owes the trust fund that much money.

But an entity can't owe money to itself.

It would be like a person who saved $ 200 a month for three years for a new car and put the money in his sock drawer. Then one day he took the $ 4,000 out and went to Nevada where he spent the money at a legal brothel.

But he was good enough to put an IOU in his sock drawer saying that he owed his car fund $ 4,000.

So does his car fund trust account have $ 4,000 in it?

Of course not. It's just as empty as the social security trust fund.

If you went to buy a used car for $ 4,000 and he asked you where the money would come from, you'd tell him you don't have a dime, but you owe your car fund $ 4,000. That would probably get a slap on the back and a chuckle.

[slipslidingaway]

10. That is what Bush says, the trust fund contains nothing but IOU's.

When Treasury Secretary John Snow was questioned on this issue he stated that the 'pieces of paper' are backed by the US. government.

You said that an entity cannot owe money to itself, but an entity was able to borrow money from itself, or in this case from the working people who paid higher taxes for twenty plus years. For Hillary to say that there was a surplus when Bill left office appears rather disingenuous, the surplus was due to the 1 Trillion dollars that had been borrowed from the SS Trust Fund.

I do not remember hearing too many elected officials talking about borrowing from the SS trust fund as they were voting for and continuing to fund the recent war.


Echoing Bush, conservatives claimed Social Security trust fund is a "myth"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502040009

"...A January 10 New York Times editorial explained:

In suggesting that 2018 is doomsyear, the president is reinforcing a false impression that the trust fund is a worthless pile of I.O.U.'s -- as detractors of Social Security so often claim. The facts are different: since 1983, payroll taxes have exceeded benefits, with the excess tax revenue invested in interest-bearing Treasury securities. (An alternative would be to, say, put the money in a mattress.) That accumulating interest and the securities themselves make up the Social Security trust fund. If the trust fund's Treasury securities are worthless, someone better tell investors throughout the world, who currently hold $4.3 trillion in Treasury debt that carries the exact same government obligation to pay as the trust fund securities. The president is irresponsible to even imply that the United States might not honor its debt obligations.

Similarly, Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explained on December 7, 2004, that claiming that the General Fund does not truly owe its apparent debt to the Social Security trust fund amounts to arguing for a large income transfer from working-class Americans to the wealthy:

Right now the revenues from the payroll tax exceed the amount paid out in benefits. This is deliberate, the result of a payroll tax increase -- recommended by none other than Alan Greenspan -- two decades ago. His justification at the time for raising a tax that falls mainly on lower- and middle-income families, even though Ronald Reagan had just cut the taxes that fall mainly on the very well-off, was that the extra revenue was needed to build up a trust fund. This could be drawn on to pay benefits once the baby boomers began to retire.

<...>

If the trust fund is meaningless, by the way, that Greenspan-sponsored tax increase in the 1980's was nothing but an exercise in class warfare: taxes on working-class Americans went up, taxes on the affluent went down, and the workers have nothing to show for their sacrifice."

[Yupster]

11. The trust fund is a worthless pile of IOU's

The Greenspan sponsored tax increase was just a way for the government to get more tax money from all of us.

If the social security surplus was invested in a mattress, at least it would be there. It's gone now. it would be even better if the money was invested in CD's or corporate bonds. Then it would actually be there.

The US Congress has a moral obligation to pay social security benefits at the current benefit formula because the Congress promised to do it while it took people's money. There is not a legal obligation though as Congress can legally change the formula at any point. No Congress is bound by any former Congress's decisions.

Notice though that whether Congress ends up paying the current formula or some reduced formula to future retirees has nothing at all to do with whether there are any IOU's in the trust fund or not. Congress will pay whatever it feels it can and wants to pay. The trust fund is truly worthless.

[slipslidingaway]

12. When taxes have to be increased to repay the SS Trust in ten?

years elected officials will try and blame it on the SS system instead of other expenditures.

They will try and collect the money from the average person, once again, and attempt to pit the young against the old. I doubt most young people know how much taxes were increased during the 80's and 90's to create the trust fund.

For me that is the reason we should not easily forget the 2 to 3 Trillion in extra taxes paid and being paid by the working people, although I do understand your points.

[pitohui]

13. think of the billions it would have cost us if it succeeded

pensions are for most of us something that didn't exist for our generation, and among older folk, i see pensions failing even in major industries like airlines, auto, etc.

it's either keep private hands off social security or be willing to see an explosion of homeless seniors, which would kill them pretty quickly, since folks over 60 don't respond to heat exposure w. the resiliency of younger folk

[llmart]

14. The whole effin' Bush administration........

has cost us a whole lot more than this. They've ruined our military for the foreseeable future - who the hell would want to join the military after this fiasco? They've ruined the economy. They've ruined the U.S.'s standing in the world.

He was always a failure at everything he was handed (he never earned anything he got) and he's a failure at the Presidency which he was handed.

[Vinca]

15. $2.8 million is chump change to Shrub.

Add a zero and make sure someone dies and maybe he'll care.

On edit: maybe he'll pay attention. He doesn't care.