{"id":3347,"date":"2005-01-11T12:28:59","date_gmt":"2005-01-11T17:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3347.html"},"modified":"2005-01-11T12:28:59","modified_gmt":"2005-01-11T17:28:59","slug":"i-wish-hed-make-up-his-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/i-wish-hed-make-up-his-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"I wish he&#8217;d make up his mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a rare press conference a couple of weeks ago, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2004\/12\/20041220-3.html\">Bush made it sound<\/a> as if he does not now, nor will he ever, have a Social Security plan of his own.<\/p>\n<p>Asked how the scheme might work, Bush said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t get to write the law.&#8221; Asked about his priorities, Bush said, &#8220;[T]he law will be written in the halls of Congress.&#8221; Asked for any semblance of detail, Bush said, &#8220;Well, again, I will repeat. Don&#8217;t bother to ask me.&#8221; It was bizarre.<\/p>\n<p>Bush has repeatedly indicated since the election that privitization will be a key priority &#8212; indeed, in his mind, it&#8217;s a &#8220;crisis&#8221; in need of immediate attention &#8212; but at the press conference, he said he expects Congress to do all the heavy lifting, including working out the details.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, Bush sang <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/0,,SB110540013749722107,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us\">an entirely different tune<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>President Bush promised to offer an ambitious plan for overhauling Social Security soon, pledging to &#8220;provide the political cover&#8221; for nervous lawmakers and warning opponents they are &#8220;taking a risk politically&#8221; by resisting change.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have an obligation to lead on this issue,&#8221; Mr. Bush said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The president deflected suggestions that he plans to leave it largely to Congress to draft a detailed plan, saying, &#8220;I have the responsibility to lay out potential solutions.&#8221; He declined to delve into specifics, but said, &#8220;You&#8217;ll find out soon.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We went from &#8220;Don&#8217;t bother to ask me&#8221; to &#8220;I have the responsibility to lay out potential solutions&#8221; in just three weeks? From &#8220;I don&#8217;t get to write the law&#8221; to a promise about specific details &#8220;soon&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>At what point do we get to start saying the White House is (cue scary music) <i>in disarray<\/i>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a rare press conference a couple of weeks ago, Bush made it sound as if he does not now, nor will he ever, have a Social Security plan of his own. Asked how the scheme might work, Bush said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t get to write the law.&#8221; Asked about his priorities, Bush said, &#8220;[T]he law [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}