The Bush Social Security Clown Show Continues

Bush gives a press conference...

You will recall that there are four potential dealbreakers--four hurdles a Bush plan must surmount before it is worth supporting:

1. Its private accounts must be a good deal for beneficiaries.
2. The plan must increas national savings (which means not carve-out but add-on).
3. The plan that preserves the defined-benefit component of Social Security in the long run.
4. The plan must implemented by competent technocrats, not the deranged monkeys who have brought us such wonders as the current deficit, the steel tariff and the Iraqi nuclear program.

Bush may have made progress on (3)--or may not. I cannot tell. He certainly did not make progress on (1), (2), or (4).

FT.com / US - Bush shifts approach on Social Security reform: Edward Alden and Holly Yeager in Washington: President George W. Bush on Thursday night endorsed a controversial plan to ensure the scheme's solvency by cutting benefits sharply for better-off workers. In a rare prime-time news conference that also focused on rising petrol prices, Mr Bush said he wanted to reform the national pension scheme so that future benefits for low-wage workers would be preserved, while middle and upper-income workers would receive less than currently promised.... An ABC News-Washington Post poll this week found 64 per cent of Americans did not approve of the way Mr Bush was handling Social Security and 51 per cent did notsupport his plan for private accounts, down from 41 per cent in mid-March. While he reiterated his support for allowing younger workers to shift into private accounts some of the money they pay into Social Security.... Private accounts that divert funds from Social Security have faced united Democratic opposition, as well as criticism from some Republicans....

You know, when I look at my four requirements, it strikes me that three of them--(1), (2), and (4)--are primarily Republican issues, or issues that are of especial concern to those whom I once thought Republicans to be. They are supposed to worry about whether Bush's private accounts are structured to be a good deal for beneficiaries (they are not). They are supposed to be worried about raising national savings (the Bush plan doesn't, except through very indirect and improbable channels). They are supposed to be worried about competence in government.

So where are the grownup Republicans on this? I don't hear a peep.

Comments

[Movie Guy]

I liked his tie.

Actually, I don't believe that he lost any ground tonight with the general population. Might have gained a few points.

Grownup Republicans? Brad, things have changed. The Grownup Republicans are now the moderate Democrats and outcast fiscal conservatives from the old Republican Party.

It's all about role reversal at this point.

You mention the word, Republican, around me, and I instantly think of runaway spending in the billions and trillions.

[SW]

Please! He screwed the pooch tonight.

[John Emerson]

Like I keep saying -- they're with the unicorns, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy.

I was hoping for the rational conservatives and sane Republicans to break for Kerry last year. They didn't.

May their blood be on their own heads.

[Cal]

Bush does not care about points (1)-(4), inclusive. My hunch is that Bush now is so drunk with hubris that he does not believe he has to address any points. He thinks he simply has to wink and smile and convince people of his feigned sincerity to win the day. Bush's conceit and most powerful motivating force is his desire to go down in history as the greatest conservative ever. He and Rove want to disembowel the Democratic Party so that it cannot function for generations. The crown jewel is the dismantling of Social Security. Bush does not care about policy. He only cares about implementing his ideology. I think that this is how his people appealed to Greenspan to get the Fed Chairman to essentially step aside and let the revolution get under way. The Democrats cannot back down.

[Ottnott]

Heh. the Republicans that are still with Bush are by now convinced that if they turn back to look at what they once were and once believed, they will turn into a pillar of salt.

They are delusional, of course. The truth is that, if they deviate from the path, they will be flogged and crucified.

[Tom DC/VA]

Brad, you're just amazingly stubborn on this "grownup Republicans" thing.

[tante aime]

Marathon Training Secrets of the Sei Do Kai

In that now confabulated cacophony of colagenous confundity
coenesthesized as the choreal chyme of Rovian Reaganautry,
we pull a random swizzle stick:

John R. Bolton, UN chevalier de Buisson, "an unabashed
sucker-upper, boot-licker and kick-downer", a cretinous tid,
nee Reginald Pelham Bolton, the 8th Baron Bolton of Bolton
Castle, High Sheriff Northumberland, Blackburn, Lancashire.
Beloved of the Old Guard, the Prescott Sheldon banking gods,
American Enterprise, Connecticut Blue Blood, Kennibunkporteur,
septuagenerian Yale-y, Skull & Bones chickenhawk ... in full battle rattle.

About as far from your down home West Texan good ol' boy as an
arugala salad, fava beans and a nice chianti. A real piece of work,
and proof that small town folks really do secretly dream of royals.

Viola! And when you read between the media, you find the Brits
threw Bolton out of their Libyan negotiations, as observed Colin
Powell, because Bolton would accept nothing less than total
regime change and forceable disarmament via occupation.

In other words, another Iraq. Lordy, imagine! Another $160B that
we don't have, down the 9300 Joint Staff rathole of the Pentagon.
We can't imagine. Nobody thinks go long. Too bad. Voici pourquoi:

First Bush stares at the camera for seven minutes at the news, then
convinces you later they all had no idea the planes were on their way.
Round one for the Neos.

Then they invade Afghanistan, even though OBL was long since gone,
they destroy the Taliban they created, they mobilize and then destroy
the Northern Alliance, rehire an old royalist and Western sympathizer,
surround him with five layers of mercenary guards in a Kabul Hotel,
and trot him out to ask for permanent US presence after DoD had
already issued for bid $80,000,000 for four military bases along the
former UNOCAL gas route, that liberals had shrilled would happen.
Fait accompli. Round two for the Neos.

Then they invade Iraq. We all know that old destrier. Capture the King,
destroy his seed, loot his banks and his museums, desecrate his
temples, level his cities, and lay waste to his lands and his peoples.
Real Old Testament kind of s--t. Most of all, seize control of the second
largest oil pool on earth, and pretend it's all a War Against Terrorism.
Done deal. Round three for the Neos.

Rumsfeld in Bush II
Round four - Neos

Rice as SoS
Round five - Neos

Wolfowitz at World Bank
Round six - Neos

Gas and Oil Monopoly
Round seven - Neos

Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Round eight - Neos

Neos

Neos

Come on, Rocky! Get up! Get up!

A friend of mine just traveled from Alaska clear to Washington DC
to see the Smithsonian, and on a lark, visited the Capital. Waiting
in the lobby, who should get in the elevator with him? John Kerry.
"What are you up to these days?" my friend asked him. "Not much,"
chuckled Lord Kerry, late of $12M in absconded campaign funds.
So it goes. While Dem's quibble, and blog's blather, the Neo's are
as relentless as a Nazi blitzkreig, and as serious as a heart attack.

Speaking of which, the death this week of the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury,
"le Lord disparu" descendant of a forebear, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury,
Antony Ashley Cooper, author of "State Prospects for the Jew", the first
treatise to deal with the concept of breaking up Syria-Palestinia, Arab
lands since the Roman times, to create a nation for the Soviet Jewry,
and so weave, out of whole cloth, the Nation of Zion. Circa ... 1840.

Six years before Dred Scott, twenty three years before the Gettysburg
Address, and one hundred and eight years before the creation of Israel,
some addled English lord was plotting to foist Russian Jews upon their
Arab blood brothers in order to seize the Ottoman Empire from Russia.
America, the United States, was barely one generation old at that point,
frontier. Read Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America", 1835 - 1840.

"This led me to examine more attentively than I had hitherto done, the
station which the American religious clergy occupy in political society.
I learned with surprise that they filled no public appointments; not one
of them is to be met with in the administration, and they are not even
represented in the legislative assemblies. In several States the law
excludes them from political life, public opinion in all. And when I came
to inquire into the prevailing spirit of the clergy I found that most of its
members seemed to retire of their own accord from the exercise of power,
and that they made it the pride of their profession to abstain from politics."

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=TocDem1.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=107&division=div2

I'm not making this s--t up! Right as Karl Marx was hatching his "Das Kapital",
another Englishman, a clergyman, was elaborating Earl Antony Ashley Cooper.
"The same year—1840—a British preacher by the name of John Nelson Darby
published a work entitled "The Hopes of the Church of God in Connexion with
the Destiny of the Jews and the Nations as Revealed in Prophesy." Darby argued
that the creation of a Jewish state within Palestine was part of a divine plan."

http://www.geocities.com/thomas_rooney2001/Zionism.html

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance, when the need ... is deep."
Saul Bellow

"A Palestinian state already exists -- in Jordan. ... Jordan is the Palestinian state."
Ariel Sharon

See, national policy has a long nascent period. A very long one. A little Condi here,
a little Carl there, a little empire building, a little skullandbonesduggery, some new
arms sales to Taiwan, some financial terrorism against Russia, an assassination
against Chavez, MFN for China's overthrow of running dogs ... you know how it goes.
But throw in the church, some Jonestownheads, and stir well? Ooh, a new Ice Age!

And then a hundred years from now, after eight years of explicit execution, following
twenty five years of Reaganautic Fantasia, that's the world your grand kids will live in.
Total lockdown. Carpetbagger economy. Tabloid media. A New Papacy. End of days.

All because some English fop got elevated to UN ambassador.

Butterflies in Brazil. Peace, out.

[anne]

The Republican plans, all the Republican plans, would cut Social Security benefits and add needlessly to risks and costs in our prime social insurance program. I am much discouraged. Social Security and Medicare must be protected. Medicaid is increasingly threatened, with severe cuts proposed on federal and state levels.

[anne]

Where is there even a mention of energy conservation and efficiency in regard to energy policy? Why is this not mentioned in so seldom conducted press conferences?

[John]

I don't see that Republicans are supposed to worry that Social Security changes truly benefit us. Did Pinochet worry about the average Chilean when he privatized Chile's Social Security program?

[Tom DC/VA]

"Where is there even a mention of energy conservation and efficiency in regard to energy policy? Why is this not mentioned in so seldom conducted press conferences?"

Come on, anne, you should know the answer to this by now.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/opinion/29krugman.html?hp

A Private Obsession
By PAUL KRUGMAN

American health care is unique among advanced countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector. It's also uniquely inefficient. We spend far more per person on health care than any other country, yet many Americans lack health insurance and don't receive essential care.

This week yet another report emphasized just how bad a job the American system does at providing basic health care. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates that 20 million working Americans are uninsured; in Texas, which has the worst record, more than 30 percent of the adults under 65 have no insurance.

And lack of insurance leads to inadequate medical attention. Over a 12-month period, 41 percent of the uninsured were unable to see a doctor when needed because of cost; 56 percent had no personal doctor or health care provider.

Our system is desperately in need of reform. Yet it will be very hard to get useful reform, for two reasons: vested interests and ideology.

I'll have a lot more to say about vested interests and health care in future columns, but let me emphasize one key point: a lot of big companies are essentially in the business of wasting health care resources.

The most striking inefficiency of our health system is our huge medical bureaucracy, which is mainly occupied in trying to get someone else to pay the bills. A good guess is that two million to three million Americans are employed by insurers and health care providers not to deliver health care, but to pass the buck to other people.

Yet any effort to reduce this waste would hurt powerful, well-organized interests, which have already demonstrated their power to block reform. Remember the "Harry and Louise" ads that doomed the Clinton health plan? The actors may have seemed like regular folks, but the ads were paid for by the Health Insurance Association of America, an industry lobbying group that liked the health care system just the way it was.

But vested interests aren't the only obstacle to fixing our health care system. We also have a big problem with ideology.

You see, America is ruled by conservatives, and they have a private obsession: they believe that more privatization, not less, is always the answer. And their faith persists even when the evidence clearly points to a private sector gone bad.

I could cite many examples of this obsession at work. But a particularly good illustration of ideology-induced obliviousness is the 2004 Economic Report of the President, which devotes a whole chapter to health care that can be read as a sort of conservative manifesto on the subject.

The main message of that report is that U.S. health care is doing just fine. Never mind the huge expense, the low life expectancy, the high infant mortality; it's a market-based system, so it must be good....

[Movie Guy]

I believe that gasoline prices are causing a natural level of conservation at the moment. Trip consolidation and so on. And that reflected in auto sales. Asia up, US domestic manufacturers models down.

President Bush is pushing for a $4,000 tax credit for consumer purchase of hybrid, efficient diesel, and/or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The House didn't include the provision, but expect the Senate energy to have it. A $2.5 billion cost spread over ten years.

I expect that we'll see more conservation tax credit proposals over the next few years.

[masaccio]

His first suggestion to deal with the price of gasoline is this gem:

"First, we must better use technology to become better conservers of energy."

So, we should spend money on technology so we do not have to change any of our consuming habits, rather than simply change our habits to use less.

[Movie Guy]

Yes, but a change of driving habits may further shrink the economy.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/politics/29budget.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Congress Passes Budget With Cuts in Medicaid and in Taxes
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON - The House and Senate broke a lengthy impasse over federal spending Thursday night, narrowly adopting a $2.56 trillion federal budget for 2006 that aims to trim the growth of Medicaid by $10 billion over five years, add $106 billion in tax cuts and clear the way for oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge....

The passage came just hours after House and Senate negotiators reached a budget deal, resolving differences that revolved largely around Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor. The budget resolution instructs lawmakers to freeze spending in most domestic programs, but not for the military and for domestic security....

[Bruce Webb]

Clearly the Rovian plan is to make Social Security unpopular to those earning near the cap and so sap support for the overall system over time. The problem is that they are risking serious electoral backlash when the real economic numbers roll in. I noted with some amusement, or more properly bemusement, Altig marvelling that 3.1% growth could be seen as bad news, all without him considering for a single moment what that same growth implies for Social Security solvency.

Social Security Crisis = Intermediate Cost Alternative = 2.0% 2005 & 1.6% longterm Productivity Growth numbers. You don't get A without embracing C, and yet private account supporters consistently use non-C in every other context without embarrassment.

Intermediate Cost's numbers are getting killed on a daily basis on the front pages of every business page in every paper printed and seemingly no one notices. I can't be the only one that can draw a straight line here.

[batavicus]

Ah, ma tante Aime, que je vous aime!

[anne]

Tom, Movie Guy, Masaccio

The budget agreement sets our limits on social policy yet more firmly, while fiscal policy will be further constrained in future as a result. Other than the proposed subsidy for hybrid or diesel vehicles, there is no effort at energy conservation and efficiency. The Social Security proposal selectively limiting benefits, turns a social insurance program to a welfare program. Health care comes down simply to limiting spending on those most in need.

[Hedley Lamarr]

Anne, they want to drain the trust fund in order to
pay for the tax cuts for the wealthy, make a dent
in the deficit, and finance the party. It's called running a kleptocracy, or reverse robin hoodery.

By the way, what income level does one need to be considered a lower level worker?

[Tom DC/VA]

"The budget agreement sets our limits on social policy yet more firmly, while fiscal policy will be further constrained in future as a result."

Well, yes, Bush's policies stink. We know that.

The snippet I quoted further above makes it seem like you are unable to grasp the idea that the Bush administration is not merely ignorant of what a good energy policy is. They do know what it is, they just don't care. They don't effing care. At all. They aren't interesting in good policy. They aren't even interested in what might be good policy under the intellectual framework they supposedly believe in. It is important you grasp this concept - Republicans are interested in power, not policy - and work it into your analytical framework. Perhaps you do understand this, and the quote I picked on was a rare lapse. If so, apologies.

[anne]

Remember, that the Administration's wish to index Social Security benefits to prices rather than to wages will cause benefits to fall ever further behind average wages. As benefits come to be worth ever less, Social Security will be ended.

[ken melvin]

Progressive me eye. It was a political maneuver. He seeks to collapse support for SSI by turning the middle class. Once he's done that, he can get rid of it. Just as with taking out Saddam, whatever it takes.

[anne]

Motives are speculative, though we may well speculate, but policy proposals and implications should be far clearer. Though I believe the thrust of conservative Social Security policy is meant to end Social Security, I am all to certain proposals such as indexing benefits to prices and other proposals to cut benefits will end Social Security.

[Movie Guy]

Anne

The Great Collapse

Phase II: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, private healthcare insurance costs

Krugman didn't make the point as well as Angry Bear did on healthcare costs, but Paul is just writing a brief op-ed piece. I question one portion of the study he cited, as we may have 40 million or more without health insurance, not 20 million. BLS alternate unemployment (underemployment included) may suggest that the larger number is more reasonable. We're talking about 9-10% of the adult population. Not to be overlooked are those workers who aren't able to capture full 38-40 hours each week at production jobs, thereby losing their medical coverage during portions of their work month. A big issue, by the way.

The Republicans have a real problem here. They're hung up on their privatization or nothing beliefs, but those beliefs are not translating into reduced costs. But they'll stay the course - hardheaded and all that. And they will play a large role in the future disruptions in society as this unfolds.

Sure, the Republicans fully intend to whack the governmental costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but they're not offering anything as a substitute. So, they're willing to sacrifice the well being of low income earners and small savers. It says a lot about their lack of character, and primary political supporters. Stone cold hearts.

This is not so dissimilar from what our Dem/Rep trade policies are accomplishing on a broader scale. Free trade proponents on both sides of the isle love global free trade, but it's going to hammer our poor and lower middle classes, and cut into tax revenues. Add the Republican tax cuts, and we're headed downstream on revenues.

No one should be surprised at the probable outcome. They setting up the Great Collapse. And the next major military war. Foolish moves, both.

There was a moment last night...a brief moment when the President demonstrated personal worry (if not actual fright) about massively growing debt levels. I doubt that many, other than astute political followers, sat up and placed key significance on what he said as he uttered those few words of alarm when answering a question. Clearly, he was taking the long view and he was genuinely worried. Well, he should be. The house of cards isn't far from collapse. I believe that he knows that. But I believe that he is looking further into the future than most would assume. Anyway, it was one of those rare moments.

This brings me to the point.

We're in more trouble that we think we are.

When you operate the national government and economy as a casino, you can have a good run of luck by stacking the deck over and over. But at some point, the odds will turn against you through a combination of errors or just one major error. Or better play by others at the table.

We're at that economic and financial table. It's being run like a casino game. Fast and loose. Both sides of the U.S. political isle have few difficulties with extending credit to themselves in order to stay in the game. And that credit is being backed up by the other players in the form of holdings in U.S. dollars and U.S. securities.

If the U.S. team players have another bad night, they're going to leave the game owing a lot of money. Big bucks debt. The choices, thereafter, are simple. Either they (1) figure out a way to borrow more money and return to the table, (2) stick us with the tab (taxes, tight credit, weaker economy, unemployment), or (3) rob one or more of the other players in the parking lot, recovering their debt chits. The last option, of course, means all out war with one of the players.

Stated differently,

The Great Collapse

Phase I: Trade Policy, Income Extraction, and Wages

Phase II: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, private healthcare insurance costs

Phase III: Massive Debts and Trading Wars

Phase IV: Major Military War

** Bill Cara offers a glimpse into Trading Wars, which is quite different from the trade war as most understand it.

http://www.billcara.com/archives/2005/04/trading_wars_th.html#comments

[anne]

Movie Guy

Well argued, and worrisome.

[RonK, Seattle]

Is there a Blahous version yet?

[PaulB]

Movie guy, I had thought I remembered reading that the difference between the 20 million and the 40 million had to do with whether the loss of health care was temporary (e.g., out of work for a month or two) or permanent. At any given time, 40 million people have no health care, but when looked at over, say, an entire year, 20 million people were without health care for the entire period. My memory may be failing me, though, so take this with a large grain of salt.

[Movie Guy]

PaulB

Perhaps so.

[anne]

http://www.rwjf.org/research/researchdetail.jsp?id=1882&ia=132

April 2005

More than 20 million working adults do not have health care coverage, according to an analysis of 2003 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In eight states, at least one in five working adults is uninsured. In 39 other states, at least one working adult in every 10 does not have health care coverage.

[Defining the data precisely is important, and I have not read the report as yet.]

[Ralph]

anne: Worried about medicaid and TANF? Want to see what happens if Bush-Pozen gets passed even though private accounts is rejected? Checkout Amy Goodman's interview of Rep Jim Moran (D,VA) at democracynow.org.