PHOTO: Bush wanted to "save" Social Security from the git-go

[Bluebear]

Then GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush answers a reporter's question about Social Security during a news conference in Portland, Ore. in this May 16, 2000 file photo.

Git-go! Hey, I spoke cowboy, just like our Prez!

Anyhow, I hear "saving" Social Security is urgent! Urgent, I tell ya. It's going bankrupt, you know, and has biological and chemical weapons stockpiled....no, sorry, wrong script.....

.....How can any thinking person believe any "urgent" scenario he paints ever again?

[Erika]

1. Many of us have never believed him

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/14/1519241

[stepnw1f]

5. I Knew He Was Scum Before 2000

The last 4 years have been depressing. There is nothing like watching your country go down hill. As the "Left" tried warning America, the media and the right drowned us out and now look at where we are.

Bitter? You damn right I am. Spit on? Most definitely. No fucking respect for those of us who actually give a damn for this country. We were the ones willing to pay our dues, and now we are the ones they steal from.

[Bluebear]

6. What you said. n/t

[Patchuli]

2. Chicken Little

You notice how *'s crises always come along with a corporate pay-off
to someone (except us)?

No one with a half a brain or who isn't filthy rich believes him. I'm
sure even the filthy rich don't believe him but what do they care? His
lunacy always benefits them.

Gee, and some of us never 'hired' * either...

[uppityperson]

3. Many people will believe this as they need to be afraid.

Fear is addictive and it's easier to be afraid of the boogeyman than to have to focus on reality. I do hope he gets impeached, though don't think it's gotten bad enough yet for the commonfolk to see his bs for what it is.

[EVDebs]

4. Save it ? This is right from the Reagan play-book...1981 tax cuts

to the wealthy had to be 'paid for' somehow and that's where the 1982-83 Social Security reforms came into play.

Fast forward to 2001 and $1.85 trillion worth of tax cuts to the wealthiest over 10 years and hey, many of the same players from that era are back in the saddle (love yer cowboy lingo !) again, ready to increase 'defense' spending-- Reagan's was like $1 trillion or so-- but DoD can't account for $2.3 trillion according to a Jan 2002 CBS news article on waste http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

They ended up raising taxes in 1982, 1984, 1986, 1990, and 1993 but when Republicans do it they call them 'revenue enhancements'. In the meantime, medical care is the real fiasco in the USofA. According to "Medicare faces cost crisis" at weblink

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/07/BUG0V9N54U1.DTL

""Looking more than 75 years into the future, (Texas A&M economist Thomas Saving) Saving estimates that the nation faces a $62 trillion unfunded liability for Medicare -- versus a $12 trillion gap for Social Security.

Yet, he said, lawmakers created a prescription drug benefit that added nearly $17 trillion in future IOUs to that $62 trillion shortfall.

As a frame of reference, the entire U.S. economy is worth about $11 trillion this year. And Saving projected only future Medicare costs. The separate Medicaid program -- whose combined state and federal costs of $270 billion in 2003 nearly equaled Medicare's $278 billion price tag -- is also on an upward trajectory.""

The SS 'gap' is bogus, the medical care gap is real. This is because globalizing corporations are dropping healthcare and pension benefits as fast as they can (see "Benefits Trap" from Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_29/b3892001_mz001.htm

""Perhaps most important, in the global economy, long-established U.S. companies are competing against younger rivals here and abroad that pay little or nothing toward their workers' retirement, giving the older companies a huge incentive to dump their plans. ""

Businesses do not want to even continue paying the SS payroll tax let alone healthcare and pension benefits to US employees, since they consider FIRST WORLD healthcare and retirement systems anathema to their sacred bottom line. As myopic a policy as you'll ever see since microeconomically this looks great, but macroeconomically it is a beggar-thy-neighbor "Race to the Bottom" viscious cycle DOWNWARD. In a world economy with total GDP of around $33 trillion annually and the USA making up about 1/3rd of that with about $11 trillion annually, and of that about 2/3rds is US consumer consumption (about 20+% of world GDP), anything global corporations can do to lessen US consumer consumption that isn't made up for in increased corresponding consumption in other countries WILL END UP HURTING THE WORLD'S ECONOMY.

Sadly to say, you can't tell supply-side economists these truths. They won't listen and if you revert to proven Keynsian demand-driven consumption examples (that is, driven by those with the highest 'marginal propensities to consume', i.e. THE POOR and MIDDLE CLASSES - precisely those ignored in the Bush Tax Cuts) they only say...'Just you wait and see'. Well, Nancy, we've been waiting over four years now and Bush's tax cuts haven't spurred the economy even barely out of the recession that Clinton is blamed for, not Enron excesses etc., and corruption/waste etc., just Clinton mind you.

Even Warren Buffett knows that corporations have been given a free ride for too long and that globalization is slowly killing us. Crikey, even Pat Buchanan knows this too, see his article "Suicide by Free Trade" if you don't believe me.

[SammyWinstonJack]

7. Then why has he waited until after his second sElection to

"fix" the "problem" with SS? Probably wouldn't have been re-sElected if he had tried to "fix" SS in his first non-elected term of office. Since he doesn't have that too worry about, he is free to loot the SS trust fund to his greedy heart's desire. Greedy POS! :grr: :mad: :argh:

[Cronus Protagonist]

8. Here's my record of his first attempt to "save" Social Security

http://bushspeaks.com/home.asp?did=38