The whole Republican gang got together over the weekend and they’d like everyone to know that they just can’t wait to privatize Social Security.
Congressional Republicans, after three months of internal debate, this weekend launched a months-long campaign to try to convince constituents that rewriting the Social Security law would be cheaper and less risky than leaving it alone, as the White House opened a campaign to pressure several Senate Democrats to support the changes.
If you remember hearing a couple of years ago that Republicans “launched a months-long campaign to try to convince constituents that invading Iraq and replacing Saddam Hussein would be cheaper and less risky than leaving him alone,” then we’re on the same page.
Nevertheless, here we are again. While there were a variety of reports out of the West Virginia retreat, there was one tidbit that stood out for me.
Republican members of the House and Senate turned their attention to the politics of changing the tax code and the lessons of President Bush’s campaign on Saturday, the second day of a party retreat here.
Party leaders and White House officials who gathered at the Greenbrier resort [in West Virginia] also discussed a new rhetorical twist in their campaign to remake Social Security. In meetings on Friday, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Representative Bill Thomas of California, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, discussed redirecting public attention on 2008 as an imminent danger point for the Social Security trust fund because baby boomers will begin retiring, people present said.
Read that last sentence again. Republicans have decided to “redirect” attention onto 2008, telling Americans that the “imminent danger point” for Social Security is a mere three years away, because they’re convinced that this will help advance their agenda. No one, anywhere, believes the system will face difficulties in 2008 (or any time in the next couple of decades, for that matter), but that’s only a problem for the “reality-based community.”
Considering that the right uses Vladimir Lenin as a model to emulate in the Social Security debate, it should hardly come as a surprise that the Republicans would embrace such obvious lies, and admit it to the New York Times, but it’s nevertheless painful to see it in print.