Bush Opening Social Security Debate Without Saying Much (no reform details

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-security20aug20,1,752164.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Bush Opening Social Security Debate Without Saying Much
By Peter Wallsten
Times Staff Writer

August 20, 2004

WASHINGTON — Even as President Bush has started telling voters that overhauling Social Security would be a key part of his second-term agenda, he is likely to avoid offering specifics before election day, according to Bush aides, lawmakers and privatization advocates.

Instead of getting into details, which would almost certainly embroil him in controversy, Bush is campaigning on broad principles for revamping the 70-year-old retirement system in a way that fits his vision for an "ownership society," the sources said.

Bush revised his campaign speech in recent weeks to include a push for changing the program to permit personal investment accounts, a proposal many conservative activists have been hoping for months he would spotlight.

"I'm worried about our Social Security system," he said Wednesday at a stop in Wisconsin. "I'm not worried about it for baby boomers like me. The system is solvent. But if you're a younger worker, I think it's important that you be allowed to have your own personal savings account that you can carry with you throughout your life…. "

Bush is promising to protect existing benefits for current retirees and others who will soon retire, while holding the line on the paycheck deductions that finance Social Security. But he is reiterating his desire to let younger workers begin using for private investment some of the money they pay to the government for the program.

Purposefully left unanswered are the most divisive questions — such as what fraction of a worker's payroll taxes could go into a private investment account instead of the Social Security trust fund, how the government would pay the estimated $1 trillion in transition costs, and how the government would protect retirees whose investments did not turn out well.

Many experts, including some conservatives, also think any meaningful privatization plan would eventually involve some combination of reduced benefits and higher worker contributions. Bush is expected to continue to skirt that issue as well.<snip>

[papau]

1. ABCNote tried to make the destruction of SS sound like simple logic!

Re:"ABCNote to Mr. Wallsten: great piece, but please understand - the POINT of private/personal accounts is to take pressure off of the trust fund by lowering the guaranteed minimum benefit. That is the POINT, not something that MIGHT happen."

The above is classic GOP Partial Truth - and indeed the partial truth is that in a personal private account system, a lower minimum SS benefit is a given.

However, to say the motivation, or the result, is to "take pressure off of the trust fund" is wrong.

The destruction of SS that is the motivation of Bush is easy to show.