Some Truth About Social Security from the MSM

There is talk that Bush's Social Security "reform" plan is in trouble because many Republicans aren't very enthusiastic. The AARP is ready to do a full blown advertising blitz to fight it starting this week. The real problem however may be that the main stream media is beginning to call the "Social Security Crisis" what it is, a non-crisis. In their editorial today the New York Times actually tells us that the Bush plan would make things worse.

The only hands-down winner would be Wall Street, as fees to manage millions of accounts poured in. (Those fees, not incidentally, would come out of your return.)

And surprise! surprise! the numbers the administration is using are totally bogus.

Well, the $10 trillion figure is the closest you can get to pulling a number out of the air. Make that the ether. Starting last year, as the groundwork was being set for the emerging debate, the Social Security trustees took the liberty of projecting the system's solvency over infinity, rather than sticking to the traditional 75-year time horizon. That world-without-end assumption generates the scary $10 trillion estimate, and with it, Mr. Bush's putative rationale for dismantling Social Security in favor of a system centered on private savings accounts. The American Academy of Actuaries, the profession's premier trade association, objected to the change. In a letter to the trustees, the actuaries wrote that infinite projections provide "little if any useful information about the program's long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead any [nonexpert] into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated."

Can you imagine that? The administration that brought us WMD in Iraq is misleading us about Social Security. Of course Mr Bush doesn't want to reform Social Security, he wants to give his Wall Street Cronies some of your money and kill Social Security in the process. The Times points out that not only is this bad policy it is bad politics and has some advice for Republican lawmakers.

It's bad policy. And it's bad politics, too, driven by reflex, ideology and special interests, and sustained by conformism that masquerades as party discipline. Lawmakers who still value their right and obligation to think for themselves - and to act in the best interest of their constituents - must champion solutions that will build on Social Security, not undermine it.

I hope a few of them are listening.