GOP candidates endorse Bush’s failed Social Security plan

October 22, 2007

Republicans in general have been struggling lately with memory trouble, but I find it hard to imagine that the GOP presidential field has completely forgotten about 2005. It wasn’t that long ago.

Shortly after his second inaugural, the president boasted of having “political capital,” which he intended to invest in privatizing Social Security. Bush figured this was his best shot — there was a Republican House, Republican Senate, and his approval rating was still above 50%. Everything was how Bush and his team wanted it.

And then the president actually started talking about his ideas to privatize the Social Security system. The more Americans heard about the plan, the more they hated it. After a few months of hearing Bush barnstorm the nation to sell his idea, Americans supported his handling of Social Security even less than his handling of Iraq.

Bush’s overall poll numbers quickly collapsed, and never recovered. Even the most sycophantic of Republicans quickly realized that Bush’s Social Security policy was poison to be avoided at all costs. Given the public’s response, a candidate would have to be a blithering fool to embrace a plan that everyone hated.

And yet, there was the Republican field last night, pretending that 2005 never happened, and vowing to pick up where Bush left off on Social Security.

If there’s any logic to this, it’s hiding well.

Fred Thompson got things started, arguing (falsely) that Social Security is going “bankrupt,” and proposing steep benefit cuts to protect the system.

Practically every other candidate recommended Bush’s approach to the issue.

* Rudy Giuliani: “OK. I think the reality is that we have to deal with Social Security. The first thing we have to do is get a consensus behind private accounts if we’re going to change it.”

* Mitt Romney: “[T]he president said let’s have private accounts and take that surplus money that’s being gathered now in Social Security and put that into private accounts. That works.” Asked how he would succeed where Bush failed, Romney added, “Well, you know, I will learn from his experience and from my own.”

* Mike Huckabee: “The president had the right idea, but he used the wrong word. When he used the word privatization, it scared the daylights out of a lot of people because…they’re thinking Enron and WorldCom, and that that’s where their money would go. The right word is ‘personalization.’ Empower individuals to have a greater say over their money.” (Yes, to Huckabee, Bush’s scheme would have worked, were it not for semantics.)

* Ron Paul: “[W]e need to allow the young people to just flat out get out of the system. Because, I tell you what, if you have the government managing these accounts, it’s not going to work.”

* John McCain: “[Y]ou have to got to the American people and say we don’t — we won’t raise your taxes. We need personal savings accounts, but we got to fix this system.”

So, most of the Republican candidates believe they can win the presidency, on a platform that includes promising to follow Bush’s model on Social Security.

Sounds good to me.

Didn’t HRC also offer up an idea that was in the form of a private account to supplement the current social security program?

  • good timing for them too. start talking about privatizing social security on a weekend after the market tanks over 300 points!

  • Just because Bush failed to get us out of a bankrupt plan doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t try. Significant political change rarely happens over night and on the first try.

    The economics of Social Security’s doom are pretty straightforward. We can continue to put our heads in the sand and dump this debt onto the next generation or start working now to avoid this train wreck.

  • I really wish people would understand what Bill Gross, the head of PIMCO, said a few years ago.

    A society can NOT save for retirement. An individual can but society can NOT.

    If everybody in the US invested in stocks and all retired with $5 billion each, then they would still be dependent on the people remaining in the work force to provide them with goods and services.

    If I have $5 billion and all the other people who are retired have $50,000 then I will retire rich. However, if everyone else has $5 billion then I am no longer rich.

  • If there’s any logic to this, it’s hiding well.

    That’s because it’s Republican logic, which is the same as Republican accountability, which is to say no logic or accountability at all.

  • JRS jr., there are a lot of sensible, intelligent people who believe in a social-security add-on, but of course, that’s not what these gop clowns are talking about.

  • This has nothing to with reality. It has everything to do with “pandering to your base”. Candidates swing to the outer extreme of their respective parties during the primaries then swing back to the middle during the general election.

    Steven, If you do not know or understand this then you should shut down your web site, go back to college and take politics 101 again.

    Common guys and gals, think before you write.

  • The idea is hilarious but the specific discussion is even better.

    Fred: “Social Security is Bankrupt!”
    Mitt: “Lets use the Social Security Surplus!”

    Um, which is it guys – bankrupt or overflowing?

    McCan’t: “The most important thing is to take the no-tax pledge.”

    Yeah, that sounds serious – lets take one entire class of posisble solutions off of the table. Gratuitously, near as I can tell, because I don’t think Bush ever linked private accounts with tax increases.

    Fred, again: “We have to start by slashing benefits!”

    Apparently he missed that this concern is why Bush’s plan died a painful death in 2005. And of course, if a program is short on money, the obvious place to start is weakening the program – we certainly couldn’t expect to replace the purely regressive nature of the social security “tax” with a more progressive tax on all income or an uncapped tax on payroll earnings. We simply must tax only the lower-income workers and then cut the benefits they receive in exchange!

    Gee, I haven’t quoted Rudy. . . maybe that is because he didn’t actually say anything.

  • As someone approaching the age of retirement, I find this discussion really annoying. We started to pay extra in 1983 to get us over the hump of the baby boom. I understand that the government used it for other things like the war in Iraq, but I’m sorry, the U.S. government owes the money to the people just as much as it owes it to other countries like China and Japan. The problem is the debt–and the war is as big a problem as retiring people. I keep hearingit’s solvent until 2040–well, by then most of baby boomers are going to be dead or dying. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult a problem, and more than anything, I don’t understand why it is isoloated from the rest of the debt. To me, it seems the rich folks like Bushco think it’s okay to cut taxes for rich folks and also okay to not pay back the debt to the American people expecting Social Security after a lifetime of paying into it. I don’t think I’m alone and it’s why it is such a loser issue for the Republicans. I hope they stick with it.

  • The Republican solution will be to raise the retirement age to 100. They will then criticize the greedy layabout centenarians who are picking our pockets.

    Oh yes, and cut taxes on the rich because that’s the Republican solution for everything.

  • It always cracks me up when they start talking about privatizing Social Security at the same time the stock market is going kaflooey. With minimum required distributions from IRAs/401(k)s for 2008 being based on the value of the IRA/401(k) as of 12/31, there are a lot of people looking with some trepidation at the market and being grateful that at least they can count on Social Security being fixed, if not increasing.

  • I could spend all day, watching these fools argue about how America should be allowed to buy a ticket on the next eastbound voyage of RMS Titanic.

    Trouble is—you can’t buy a ticket on the “next” eastbound voyage, when there was never a “first” eastbound voyage….

  • Soc. Security IS going bankrupt.
    Benefits cuts ARE a solution.
    SOME would call the necessary cuts “Steep”.

    Thompson isn’t entirely wrong. (Hey, even a monkey throwing darts hits the bullseye once in a while.)

    Raise the retirement age. Means test it. Increase the taxation cap. Index to consumer inflation instead. A combination of all 4?
    The adjustments needed to make social security healthy again sounded pretty minor to me.

    It’s easy to fix if anyone can get such changes past the AARP.

    Bush’s privatized accounts don’t provide any disability or meaningful survivorship benefits. If you die at 25 with kids, they’re screwed without social security. I’m assuming there may not be an endlessly generous church system whose collection plate coffers will pour college funds on the poor orphans if those pesky FICA taxes would go away. Trickle down has worked for everything else, why not faith based retirement?

  • The only way a private account system could possibly derive reasonably secure benefits is with a significant increase in government regulation to make the system work. Would any Republicans do that — hell no! Our current housing and mortgage problems are a case in point. A large influx of money into a poorly regulated industry drove up the prices of an essential commodity (housing) while leading to a huge market for scammers and predatory lenders who didn’t care what happened to the home buyer or the investors backing the risky loans. The ripple effects of spreading risky securities throughout the investment pool has exposed a great many supposedly safe investments (like money market funds) to high risk. When left to their own devices, investment markets will figure out a way for people managing the investments to make money which is not necessarily the same as the investor receiving a return on their investment nor recouping their capital (see Enron.)

    What Republicans don’t get is what security means — risk reduced to the most acceptable level. Instead of social security, these guys are advocating for government mandated risk taking. That’s the opposite of security. What Huckabee really needs to call his plan is the “give your retirement money to my corporate buddies so they can make some money off it and maybe even pocket all your retirement money for themselves” accounts.

    neil wilson – WTF? If everyone in the US retired with $5B then we’d have some pretty extreme inflation and retired people, by definition, rely on others to provide them with goods and services. A great many business sectors flourish by providing those goods and services. Your point is?

  • Bankruptcy is when your liabilities exceed your assets. You may be cashflow positive in the meantime, but you will not be able to pay your debts when they come due. That’s what they mean when they say that currently their is a surplus (system is cashflow positive) but bankrupt (the liabilities — the present value of all future benefits — exceed assets – the present value of all future tax revenue streams).

    The Social Security system is bankrupt. The US case is not isolated – most other ‘developed’ economies are facing the same problem.

    We would have been better off if the government had left us with our money and let us save and invest it as we please.

    One major aspect of Social Security that no one ever mentions: it favors white women and disfavors African-American men. How so? Well, just look at life expectancy. White women live the longest – they will derive the most benefits. African-American men live much less – they will derive the least benefits. How do “progressives” defend this? Bankrupting the country in the process!

  • Neil Wilson #5 makes an interesting point, although I would phrase it differently. Money, by itself, has no intrinsic value. Retired people are entirely dependent upon the labor of those still in the work force for their needs. They contribute very little themselves. They are mostly consumers, not producers. Have trouble seeing it? Pretend the Rapture comes along and whisks away all those 65 and younger. Uh oh. Now what do the retirees do? All that money, and nothing to buy.

    So the Social Security problem is very complex, fundamental, and can’t be dealt with in our current political atmosphere of partisan warfare and struggle for power. It takes people whose interests lie in creating a just society, and our system just doesn’t foster that. Ours is a Darwinian, greed based society, and becoming all the more so. In the corporate world, the bottom line is investor profits; In our political system, it’s power. Neither serves the people’s interests directly, and only somewhat indirectly.

    So I really have no confidence that we can solve the big problems of today, or even agree on what they are. For example, we are devoting humongous resources to this “global war on terror,” which seems to be far more a political tool, than a real world crisis. And we are continuing to feed this military-industrial complex to the detriment of our people. I mean how come Norway and Denmark et al don’t need all this military might?

    In short, our society is not currently working for the “general welfare” of its people.

  • A huge number of Americans don’t understand money or retirement, thinking it will never happen to them. They mishandle savings and thank God there is SS out there as a safety net. It’s like saying the people who wanted to be millionaires just went out there and did it, like there’s no reason for us all not to be rich…that is not the reality.

    These republicans try with all their might to to destroy government rather than make it more efficient. They use it as a means to profiteer off the nation by making profit from our safety net. Their motto is screw you if you didn’t make wise choices ( go to college, didn’t get pregnant, didn’t get sick etc.) and now you have no money for retirement or health care.
    Republicans are the party of tax and borrow and borrow and borrow and then they preach to others on how to save their money.

  • Mark, please take your recycled inaccurate piffle and shove it (and your comments about the “racist” nature of the social security system are an especially tired and stupid comment: the relevant question, of course, is life expectancy at age 65, not birth, not that i would expect an idiot like you to understand the relevant question).

    the fact is, social security has a guaranteed income source: ergo, it is not “bankrupt.” benefits may (or may not) have to be adjusted to fit within the available funds. so what.

    by your standard, sonny, the US government is bankrupt, at which point the term ceases to have any useful meaning at all.

    how do people this ignorant learn nto type?

  • There are some pieces missing here, I’m hoping that someone more knowledgeable than I can help.

    Is Social Security’s solvency, the lack thereof, predicated on Congress returning the funds it has borrowed over the years? It’s difficult for me to sort out the conflicting claims about the health of Social Security when I don’t know how much money the fund actually has and how much may be owed to it by the government.

    Would simply abolishing the cap on income subject to Social Security withholding push back insolvency by any reasonable amount of years? I think that I’ve only earned enough money to get past the income cap a few times in my life. Seems regressive that 100% of lower wage-earner’s income is subject to SS withholding while that of those who are more well-off is not.

    If, as many leading Republicans tell us, revenues go up when taxes go down then shouldn’t they be advocating that SS withholding be sharply reduced?

    Why is it that it’s okay to finance a war with deficit spending but it’s not okay to finance Social Security the same way? The boomers are a one-time wave that will pass, probably more quickly than the war in Iraq.

  • Thanks for elevating the tone of the discussion, Howard.

    About it being racist – a much higher portion of African-American will pay into the system and never see its benefits than most other groups. If you think that’s fair, please, go ahead and explain it to them.

    “benefits may (or may not) have to be adjusted to fit within the available funds. so what.”
    So what? Would you invest in a stock or bond or put your money in a bank if it said – hey, we think we can give you a return of X, but we really don’t know, in fact, we may just cut your returns if we erred in our calculations. This is not a lemonade stand, it’s a trillion-dollar system.

    No, the US government is not necessarily bankrupt – part of the problem of this question is that it’s much harder to value the ‘assets’ of a country. For example, the federal government is sitting on trillions of dollars in assets in public land. How do you value that? What prices do you use? What about other ‘potential’ assets like airwaves space? Much more complex.

  • Look, the entire field wanted to attempt Bush’s plan for private accounts, accept one person last night – Ron Paul. He wants to take that saved money from ending our foreign entanglements and put it into the system (and paying off the defecit,) so that Young people can get away from social security completely (this is entirely different than private accounts) meanwhile those that have grown accustomed to government handouts, and those that have paid into the system will be taken care of.

    Private accounts simply means that while you are still forced at gun point to give up your money you are allowed to decide where a very small percentage of that money goes.

    What we need is TRUE privatization so young people can get away from the socialistic system that is already bankrupt, let alone a proper function of government.

  • “We would have been better off if the government had left us with our money and let us save and invest it as we please.”

    So true. I am 35 and saving as much as I can as I have no confidence in the goverment supplying me with my retirement funds in 30 years.

    “Seems regressive that 100% of lower wage-earner’s income is subject to SS withholding while that of those who are more well-off is not.”

    That is because benefits are capped as well.

  • TRUE privatization…

    According to figures released by the Commerce Department earlier this year, America’s personal savings rate dipped to a negative 1% in 2006. This is only the fifth time in seventy years that the rate has gone negative. The other years were 1932, 1933, and 2005. The first two, 1932 and 1933 occurred during the Great Depression.

  • My basic point is that virtually everything we use, consume, etc. today has been produced fairly recently.

    OK, my house was built 50 years ago but it needs regular upkeep.

    My car is 5 years old but will need to be replaced soon.

    The food on my table was grown more than 3 months ago.

    Whatever, the people of today have a high standard of living because

    THE PEOPLE OF TODAY ARE PRODUCING A HIGH LEVEL OF GOODS AND SERVICES

    If EVERYONE were to retire then nothing would be produced and we would all starve to death.

    I never mentioned money. It doesn’t matter if I have $5 billion or 1 million ounces of pure gold. I will die if no one is working, period.

    The United States, or any group, needs to have people working to support the people who don’t work. There will always be a transfer of productive goods from the people who are working to the people who aren’t.

    No law passed by Congress can change that law.

    My point is that IF social securitty is going broke there is nothing we can do about it today. The people of today are going to provide for the people of today. The people of tomorrow are going to provide for the people of tomorrow.

    What is the solution?

    A large part of the solution must come from having more people work and less people retired.

    Am I nuts?

  • Neil, what you are not figuring into the equation is pricing. Of course you always need people to provide goods and services to each other. However, they must be priced based on supply and demand as determined in the marketplace. Unfortunately, Social Security is not market-based. The government simply defined a certain level of benefits and obligated all contributors to pay for them. This resulted in a massive transfer in wealth to current beneficiaries from current and future taxpayers. This was “manageable” at the start, but as the ratio of retiree to contributor worsened, it became harder and harder to pay that high level of benefits. The insistence on arbitrarily-defined benefits is what has bankrupted the system.

    If the government had let people keep their money, work and save, they would be receiving benefits based on what they accumulated and there would be no massive transfer of wealth from one group to another. Instead, retirees would be using the money they saved to pay current people for goods and services.

  • Mark, the tone of the discussion sank when you started producing your idiot swill, so don’t give me any snide remarks about “elevating the tone” when you are clearly misinformed about…well, everything.

    let’s start with the “racist” claptrap: you don’t seem to understand that the primary difference between white and black life expectancy is child mortality. by the time people are of working age, the differences have narrowed quite considerably. it is an argument of sublime ignorance to claim that the system is “racist” as a result; it would be equally sublimely ignorant if you claimed that the system is “sexist,” since women outlive men.

    now, social security, my ill-informed little troll, is not an “investment.” it is “social insurance.” it does not give you a “guaranteed” payoff in the same sense that you can buy a US government bond and know that the interest payments (and return of principle) will be made, and it is quite daft to try and compare them. indeed, the system has been adjusted dozens of times without any problem.

    but this, of course, obscures the fact that you are trying to change the subject: you claimed that the system was “bankrupt” because the present value of future liabilities outweighs the present value of future revenue streams. all i’m pointing out is that future liabilities aren’t fixed (anymore than future revenues are): they can (and will, when we don’t have a president devoted to destroying social security) both be adjusted.

    meanwhile, let’s assume the worst: that somewhere around 2040 liabilities outweigh revenues and nothing has been done in the interim. well then, the social security recipients of 2040 will see a slight shift downward in what they receive (which will, of course, still be considerably higher than what a social security recipient receives today).

    in short, the notion that the system is “bankrupt” is completely fallacious.

    and, of course, you actually know this, or you wouldn’t try defending the US government’s position (by your definition) by introducing “assets.” i didn’t invent the definitions here, sport: you did. you said it’s very simple: present value of liabilities, present value of revenues. period. case close. (l love how you introduce “complex” when your own argument is, in fact, full of beans.)

    and on that basis, the US government is “bankrupt.” which is a damn stupid way to think, albeit consistent with what you’ve shown us here.

    btw, mark, perhaps it has escaped your attention (i wouldn’t at all be suprised); insofar as you want to compare social security to anything in the investment world, you compare it to an annuity: you can outlive your capital, but you can’t outlive an annuity, which is part of the benefit that social security offers to people. if you want to discuss “complexities,” that would be a good place to start: the benefit of “pooling” is that it is much easier for a “pool” to provide annuities to all its members (since demographics tells us fairly accurately the aggregated exposure) than for each individual in that pool to save sufficiently to buy his or her own annuity. now that’s a “complexity” worth pondering, unlike your attempt to value the airwaves as proof the us government isn’t bankrupt (instead of reassessing your own overly simplistic defintion).

  • JRS Jr., keep saving, by all means, because it is not the purpose of social security to provide you your “retirement funds.” it is the purpose of social security to be one leg of a three-legged stool to supply your retirement funds, the other two legs being personal savings and pension (ha! those were the days!). so you are quite right to assume that the government won’t be providing you “retirement funds” as such: that was never the intent of social security.

    the good news, though, is that (as i just got through explaining to mark), what you are getting is an annuity that will last the rest of your life. and as long as the marks of the world don’t constitute a majority of congress, you will most certainly be collecting that annuity far into the future….

  • If you think you will outperform the market on a consistent basis throughout your working career — 40 to 50 years so as to be able to retire comfortably, well, I have a bridge to sell you.

    The market has winners and losers, for a reason. To be a winner over a large period of time would make you better than average in Lake Woebegon where everybody is better than average.

    In addition, the impending crash (orchestrated by large banks, investment bankers, Wall Street, the Fed, and the Treasury) will render all assertions about “being able to manage money better than SS” completely fatuous.

  • “If you think you will outperform the market on a consistent basis throughout your working career — 40 to 50 years so as to be able to retire comfortably, well, I have a bridge to sell you”

    Sounds like I could sell you a bridge! I would only hope to perform As Good As the market, which over the time frame disclosed, has returned 7% (with dividend income), far more than the social security pool earns.

  • It doesn’t make any difference whether the social security system is bankrupt or not.

    Scenario 1) We let everyone invest in the stock market with 13.4% of their money.
    Scenario 2) We keep the system the same and everyone pays 13.4% in payroll taxes.

    Then in 2050, 2100, or any date in the future, the people who are retired still have to depend on the people working to shovel snow, grow the food, and paint the house.

    Notice it makes ZERO difference how much society has saved. The workers still need to do the work.

  • JRS, let’s repeat again: social security is not an investment program; it’s an annuity program.

    therefore, you can’t compare the “return” on social security with the “return” on investments (putting aside that past performance is no guarantee of future results even if you invest in an index fund).

    if you want to compare anything, compare the annuity you can buy with (and i’ll go ahead and grant you) a 7% return on your payroll tax, compounded up to age 65, with the annuity social security gives you. make sure that you also factor in the value of the insurance kicker that social security also embodies. make sure the annuity you can buy at age 65 is adjusted annually for the CPI. make sure the annuity is risk-free and cannot possibly default.

    then you’ve got a comparison to make.

  • oh, JRS, one more thing: make sure you factor in the “event risk” that the year you want to buy your annuity is a year like 2001 and the market is tanking just as you want to liquidate….

    just trying to keep the comparison honest.

  • Some people worship at the alter of (in a big booming voice)
    The All-Knowing Market. (Thunder Boom)

    Don’t get the actuarial data, that would confuse the worshippers.

    Hey, privatized electric service worked out really well, for the private electrical service operators.

    You see “the base” is a worshipping type of population, and they worship Bush. So if it is a Bush idea, it has to be an unquestioned truth.

  • Some of you truly need to wake up from this fantasy that the Democrats or Republicans somehow have your best Social Security interests in mind. Neither of them do.

    If the amount of corruption and out-and-out thievery shown by both parties over (at LEAST) the past 20 years has shown the thinking individual ANYTHING AT ALL, its not to trust the government as the great big mommy thats going to make sure youre taken care of in times of crisis or when you get old.

    Im voting for Paul. Most consistently sensible ideas I have heard in politics in years and someone with a track record of doing WHAT THEY SAY, not lying their way into office to preserve the status quo.

    You tell me what’s so “crazy” or “radical” or bad about raising the option for younger generations TO GET OUT of social security and invest their own money in a private account if they want to. To argue against that OPTION being introduced and made available is to literally contend from the basis that the government owns you.

  • Hey, Julian –
    I’d like to quote Dick Cheney to you.
    This has been a sucessful program by the government, and don’t blame anyone but yourself for being stupid enough to vote for Republican.
    Imagine, voting to have someone run something when they say it can’t work. What a bunch of retards!

  • Can’t we just kill the Ponzi scheme softly instead? Here’s how to do it:

    1. Insitiute a 6-month opt-out period. People can leave SSA and get their coerced payments back with them. However, if they leave, they get no benefits later.
    2. After that period ends, end new enrollees.
    3. Put in a true lockbox, with no funds being raided.
    4. Pay back all “borrowed” funds with interest.
    5. Repeal the wage cap.
    6. Last one out kills the program and the program shuts down, permamently.

    Of course, this would never happen, because nobody in DC has the guts, brains, or foreknowledge to do this…

  • WaryTale, too kind!

    Tannim, i could go chapter and verse about why your entire characterization of social security is wrong, but instead, as a witness for the defense, i’m going to call Friedrich Hayek:

    There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom…there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody…Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of the assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong….To the same category belongs also the increase of security through the state’s rendering assistance to the victims of such “acts of God” as earthquakes and floods. Whenever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself or make provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken….There is, finally, the supremely important problem of combating general fluctuations of economic activity and the recurrent waves of large-scale unemployment which accompany them…

    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/10/tim_duy_in_defe.html (yes, that’s right, hayek, the great free marketer and exponent of liberty, believes in a safety net, inclusive of social insurance)

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  • Social Security reform wasn’t “lost” it was defeated, by the liberal noise machine, led by the AARP, who are not interested in what happens to future oldsters, just the current, dues-paying variety.

    One must suffer from total ignorance not to see the value of optional personal accounts. It is the best of both worlds, preserving the safety net while allowing the less dependent-minded to secure a better future for themselves. Why let this ponzi-scheme languish until it collapses? Easy answer, partisan political football. The left only cares for their own immediate political fortunes.

    Why not ask Mrs. Clinton about the value of personal accounts invested in the market? Her 401K plan doesn’t seem to suffer from the paranoid market fears that lefty columnists and bloggers invented in order to defeat the President’s plan. But then, it was really only about one thing. Bush wanted it, so lefties didn’t. Like the children they are.

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