This LA Times editorial should give the Dems another valuable line of attack against Bush’s scheme to kill Social Security.
President Bush is setting out to convince the nation that the danger is imminent and can be addressed only with bold action. Sound familiar?
The White House is deploying the strategy it used to sell the war in Iraq to sell its plan for partial privatization of the Social Security system.
The intelligence might not be as flawed, but the spin is equally disingenuous. If no changes are made to Social Security, according to the latest educated guesses, the program will not be able to pay out all its commitments by 2042. But it’s absurd for Bush to equate this long-term actuarial shortfall — which could change dramatically over the years — with real deficits that make financial markets wary.
That didn’t stop the president from doing it at a two-day economic pep rally he hosted in Washington last week.
No, of course it didn’t. Bush has never let things such as facts and reality get in the way of a political scheme, but the LAT point is an important one.
Bush’s modus operandi has become transparently clear: take pre-conceived right-wing agenda item, lie about it, ignore critics from both sides, insist that his proposed solution is necessary immediately, and smear anyone who disagrees. He did it with his tax cut plan, the Patriot Act, Medicare, and the war in Iraq. Now, as the LAT piece notes, he’s doing it with Social Security.
The Bush administration is not only insisting, rather daftly, that it can cut the deficit while extending its tax cuts; now it wants to borrow trillions more to confront what it fraudulently labels an imminent threat.
Bush’s intentionally confused economic policies all contribute to a different sort of shortfall — the U.S. credibility deficit on the global stage. For a spendthrift borrower, that poses a real, imminent danger.
Bush is still vulnerable in dealing with discussions of “imminent threats.” Dems, therefore, should remember to use this phrase in the Social Security debate as often as possible.