{"id":4782,"date":"2005-07-22T13:27:35","date_gmt":"2005-07-22T17:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4782.html"},"modified":"2005-07-22T13:27:35","modified_gmt":"2005-07-22T17:27:35","slug":"bush-returns-to-his-favorite-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-returns-to-his-favorite-subject\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush returns to his favorite subject"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president hit the campaign trail today, visiting Atlanta to, as Bush likes to put it, “catapult the propaganda<\/a>.” Naturally, Bubble Boy policies will be in effect<\/a> and the president will only see and hear from pre-screened sycophants.<\/p>\n

What’s the issue this time? We’re back to Social Security. With several other political developments in the news the last couple of weeks, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that, on Capitol Hill, the fight over Social Security continues unabated. The entertaining part is seeing the relevant players — all of them Republican — at loggerheads<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The White House’s top economic adviser said yesterday that President Bush will insist that any Social Security legislation include a fix to the program’s long-term financing problems, undercutting House leaders’ efforts to craft a compromise that ignores the solvency question.<\/p>\n

Ben S. Bernanke, the new chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters the president “will insist on maintaining the long-term solvency of the Social Security system, so that it can continue to provide benefits to retirees in the future.”<\/p>\n

Asked if a solvency fix was inviolable, Bernanke said yes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is getting a little silly. House Republicans are planning to vote as early as September on a plan<\/a> to finance private accounts through the existing Social Security trust-fund surplus. This approach would, by its sponsors own admission, make Social Security’s solvency issues considerably worse, add billions to the deficit, and wreak havoc on congressional budgeting (the trust-fund surplus currently finances the federal budget). It would also, necessarily, lead to benefit cuts<\/a> for Social Security beneficiaries.<\/p>\n

But the ridiculous part is Bush’s response. He rejects the House plan because it does not improve Social Security’s long-term solvency issue. Instead, the president prefers his approach, which, as it turns out, does not improve Social Security’s long-term solvency issue.<\/p>\n

The entire debacle would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president hit the campaign trail today, visiting Atlanta to, as Bush likes to put it, “catapult the propaganda.” Naturally, Bubble Boy policies will be in effect and the president will only see and hear from pre-screened sycophants. What’s the issue this time? We’re back to Social Security. With several other political developments in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4782","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}