Wednesday, May 04, 2005

The son of the return of the Social Security roundup, part II

A nice even-handed review from the Christian Science Monitor: “What comes next in the Social Security saga?
Steven Pearlstein in the WashPost - “Democrats wasting their opportunities”: “Apparently, they'd rather have an issue to demagogue than actually rescue a vital program.”
Little known facts about Social Security (via Polipundit)
and TechCentralStation’s “The Social Security Trust Fund is Irrelevant (Or How Al Gore Was Right)”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Any room for me?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201259.html

"If the president is serious, let him first persuade members of his own party to agree to a detailed proposal so everyone knows what the trade-offs are. If what he has in mind is a good idea, Republicans will be eager to sign on. And if Bush can't get Republicans to go along, might that say something about the merits of his suggestions?"

"Repealing Bush's tax cuts for those earning more than $350,000 a year could cover all or most of the 75-year Social Security shortfall. Keeping part of the estate tax in place could cover a quarter to half of the shortfall."

"Last, there are the trillions of dollars that Bush would have us borrow to cover the transition to the private accounts he wants to set up. It's far from clear that cutting future Social Security benefits for younger members of the middle class and saddling them with mounds of new indebtedness would make either them or the country better off. Anyone who is truly conservative might have a question or two about whether this "solution" is worse than the problem it is purportedly addressing."