In Speech, Bush to Stress 'Ownership'

[papau]

Does anyone expect Bush to note that his Social Security individual investment accounts may have - PER a commission he appointed - cost of as much as $2 trillion over the next decade - or to say how he will pay for that cost? Will the media let Bush get away with not offering many specifics, so that there is no "target" for Kerry to discuss? A "He trusts the government, I trust the people" campaign that never tells them how they are going to be screwed?


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-speech30aug30.story

In Speech, Bush to Stress 'Ownership'
President will seek to draw distinctions with Kerry on healthcare and retirement, aides say (reform and an "ownership society").
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

August 30, 2004

NEW YORK CITY — President Bush plans to stress themes of "ownership" and government reform in his acceptance speech Thursday, positioning himself to reprise one of his most effective arguments against Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 campaign.<snip>

Bush strategists believe this agenda will allow them to frame the campaign's domestic debates as a choice between the president's push to empower individuals and proposals by Sen. John F. Kerry that they will portray as a return to big government. <snip>

• Restructuring Social Security to allow workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in the stock market;

• Providing tax credits to help uninsured workers and families buy health insurance;

• Providing subsidies to help lower-income families buy a home;

• Creating new tax-free accounts that individuals could use to save for retirement or buying a first home.<snip>

(tax-code reform - simplify/streamline the system - a national sales tax ? or a flat tax - but only for FIT - regressive payroll tax would be unchanged?)

<snip>
But insiders say the president is unlikely to embrace a specific plan — either Thursday or through the campaign — focusing rather on pledging to work across party lines for reform based on principles such as simplicity.

Bush advisors said the president wanted to maintain a balance between revealing enough of an agenda to reassure voters that he hadn't run out of ideas for a second term, while avoiding specifics that could provide a tempting target for Kerry and his Democratic presidential campaign.<snip>


But Kerry argues that the ideas Bush promotes as increasing ownership are really intended to shift the risks of retirement and healthcare from government and employers toward individuals. Kerry and other critics maintain that individuals can achieve greater economic security by remaining within collective programs meant to spread risk over a large pool of participants, such as employer-provided healthcare, Social Security and Medicare.

"Bush is offering a return to the pre-social insurance world in which people bore risk mostly on their own," said Theodore R. Marmor, a professor of public policy at the Yale University's School of Management. "Kerry … wants to preserve the spreading of risk in the name of stability."<snip>

[WI_DEM]

1. yes but he also has a record now

to put up against his empty rhetoric. In 2000 he also claimed to balance the budget and create millions of new jobs. He talks about workers investing social security payroll deductions in the stock market, well have Americans forgotten the huge losses the stock market took earlier in Bush's term? and that lots of people lost their retirement incomes? this is a "risky scheme". Kerry should also be playing up Bush's advocacy of a national sales tax which is a huge tax hike on the working poor and middle class.

[CBHagman]

2. Note the emphasis on disposable income.

The bulk of his proposals won't assist the middle or working class at all. Just add a few more tax-free savings accounts and claim you've done something.

Also, I'd like to know how Bush squares his "ownership" plan with his supposedly Christian faith. Bush has favored the very wealthiest with his economic policies and keeps talking about how owning something keeps us invested in society. But what about nuns, students, and others who have no real property?

"A man's life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses." Luke 12:15, King James Version.

[maine_raptor]

8. Hey CB, you think he actually READ that?

[Toucano]

3. Ownership is great.

The problem is he's talking about them owning us! LOL!

Seriously though, America can't afford ownership with Bush's deficit. We can't even finance it at 10 billion easy payments of 19.99 a month.

He's got us building a dream house when we're behind in the rent and about to be evicted.

On edit:

Corrected typo and added...

Bush is like a drunken teenager with a new credit card.

[kentuck]

13. We do "own" the deficit....

He has already made ownership part of all of our lives - including the children.

[maine_raptor]

4. Oh Boy!!!

Time for the Dems to get out the Senior vote (or as the Repugs will call it "scaring the old folk".

Sarcasm off

[UTUSN]

5. But Will It Sound Like THIS?

***************QUOTE********
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/08/25/bush_second_term/index.html

And you thought his first term was a nightmare
What Bush has planned for America if he wins.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Charles Tiefer

Aug. 25, 2004 | .... Under Bush's slogan of an "ownership society," the Republicans intend a long-term effort, using changes in Medicare, Social Security and taxes to pit better-off and worse-off Democrats against each other, offering all-but-irresistible incentives for some to desert the others -- and any progressive national coalition. .... A second-term Bush agenda will constantly impale Democrats on the dilemma of abandoning their poorer, sicker, older and minority groups, or seeing their better-off, healthier and younger members lured off to the other party. If it sounds like a political nightmare for the Democrats, that's because that's what it is planned to be. ....

********UNQUOTE*******

[Frodo]

6. One thing a great many people "own" but don't accoutn for...

...is their whopping share of the National Debt.

[cindyw]

7. A lot of fat good talking about the virtues of ownership does me

when I'm broke. It's like rubbing salt in my wounds. Gee thanks George for reminding me how great it is to own your own house while your economy is making it harder for me to get a job and afford health care, much less pay my bills on time so my credit is good. Gee thanks George.

It's like Strom extolling the virtues of eating at a good restaurant counter to the blacks in the 60's or southerners in the 1850's telling a group of slaves how great it is to own your own plantation.

[Eurobabe]

9. Ownership, so we can get ENRON' D?

or HALLIBURTONED?

No thanks. That's not the answer. I know that changes have to be made, not sure what they should be yet...Bush wants to privatize so he can reward all his elite CEO buds as soon as possible.

[opihimoimoi]

10. Some of his CEO BUddies make as musch as 50 Million$$$

per year. One guy made $75 Million. Obscene

[oscar111]

11. $ 350 Million-Cheney, Haliburton..does he still get that much? gets Someth

still gets something from Haliburton, i read here.

double check my 350 million figure, might have been merely 300 million.

Veep Quayle in '88... inherited $ 600 million. Deserved it all, wouldnt you agree? LOL.

[oscar111]

12. ownership demolished

ss into stocks... "dont save, take it to a casino {aka stock market}"
You own NOTHING when stocks crash.

tax breaks for the poor to get a home.. a dem idea hijacked, probably much fewer people will get a home, tho.

tax breaks for retirement savings or health savings... gambling again. In crisis, folks will pull it out, despite penalties.

Simplify taxes.. excuse to do regressive taxes. {better ways exist to simplify them}
==================
SUMMARY--
The ONLY ownership idea.. of a home... is a dem idea, probably to be applied to a tenny number of folks. Details in the Fine print, faint print will knock out most, i bet.

[opihimoimoi]

16. Pubs are Cruel and Selfish, could give a shit about middle and lower class

The Poor hardly vote...tis the problema...and the Pubs know it... this is why they cater to the rich...fuck the poor...

[KittyWampus]

14. Ownership? Ownership of Debt. As Individuals, Families And A Nation

with a precious few owning assets and bonds.

[Jane Austin]

15. A question about privatizing Social Security:

How do you pay into a private account if you are unemployed or underemployed?

Shouldn't that figure into the discussion?

[opihimoimoi]

17. Pubs using E Button...Emotion.... rejects, distracts away from Logic/reaso

[fujiyama]

18. He'll stress

how he owns us, or actually how his corporate buddies own us.

He'll talk about how that ownership gives him authority to send you to fight and die for whatever war he deems worthy.