Bush's Perfect Storm or Beware Bushies Bearing Reform

[Cannikin]

Here’s how a perfect storm of bad policy could sink regular taxpayers if the Bush administration gets its way:

On the retirement front, the early, hard choices about Social Security and Medicare that could mitigate much harder, much more painful choices down the road are avoided. Instead the administration gets its trophy of limited private accounts and there are no benefits or funding changes now.

On the tax front, the administration ignores its stated goal of tax simplification, but attains its covert dream of eliminating taxation on investment income. It "pays" for this, in part, by adding new taxes on employer-paid health benefits and Social Security benefits.

These two fronts, in a decade or two, collide when Social Security and Medicare simultaneously start to crash. The only way to keep funding even modest retiree benefits (which are taxed, remember) will be to dramatically increase payroll taxes and income taxes on those poor schlubs who are still working, since corporate taxes and taxes on non-earned income would be long dead.

Likely? I don’t know. Possible? It certainly is.

Continuted
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/16/opinion/meyer/main661576.shtml

[GetTheRightVote]

1. There it goes again, * gets the working class down the line

I hate him so much and the stupid people in this country who buy his lies, we are going to pay for their stupidity. They are the only ones who should have to deal with his evil axis of power decisions, only the red states not the blue.

[Deja Q]

2. Assuming we all live to reach that age.

What with Iran and Russia and China and everybody else, including North Korea, I think somebody's going to push the button.