Everything In It's Right Place

Which is the (great!) song I happen to be listening to. Anyway I'm about to point to some comments by Joshua Michah Marshall, who's work on the upcoming Social Security debate has been inspiring. In fact if you just read Talking Points Memo and Paul Krugman's columns over at the New York Times you'll be well armed to handle the Social Security debate. On the other hand, neither of those guys is willing to bring you the 1910's plutocrat perspective on issues of the day, so I suggest you continue reading this weblog as well.

Anyway Talking Point's Memo has some reactions to the State of the Nation as well.

But the truth is he's going to try to siphon off one out of every three dollars that goes into Social Security -- the money that goes to pay those benefits he's telling you 55-and-over folks not to worry about.

Remember, he says the program's in trouble in 13 years and bankrupt in less than forty as it stands now. And now he's telling people who are 55 and over that they can rely on the program with complete confidence even though, under his new plan, it'll have to make do with 2/3 of its current revenues.

Does those two facts compute to you? You think that might put a little stress on the system? Even if the president just decides to pull out the national Visa card and borrow a few trillion more dollars to make up the shortfall, that will just come back and hit the program in other ways and more than soon enough to hit people a decade from retirement. People who are 55 today will be alive in 10, 20, 30 and more years from now. And like so many of President Bush's promises this is one he couldn't keep even if he wanted to.

Those are some good questions. I suppose it does point towards Bush and his followers wanting to solve the Social Security problem "permanently."