Picked to Write Social Security Bill, Grassley Finds No Clamor for It

The father of the bankruptcy "reform" bill takes on Social Security?

This should be an entertaining little disaster.

about Social Security must be preventing Bush and the republican Congress from continuing to spend the Social Security annual surplus. It should be invested by the Social Security administration in a single trust fund account which holds broad stock and bond index funds. This would improve the solvency of the trust fund and reveal the true deficit that Bush and the republican Congress are advocating in their budgets.

The republicans would howl with outrage and their only defense would be that every president and Congress has done it. But the democrats can easily argue that Bush's incessant complaints about the upcoming insolvency of the trust fund show that it is finally time to stop this practice. This would turn Bush's argument for privateering Social Security against him. He and other republicans would shit their pants.

I'll spread the word.

about Social Security must be preventing Bush and the republican Congress from continuing to spend the Social Security annual surplus

No matter what we do to fix the system, it won't work as long as repugnicans can use our retirement funds to give their wealthy friends more money.

or in Editorials and other Articles so that it can get more focused attention. This deserves a wider reading.

as am I. I spent Tuesday going to Jim Leach's (2nd Iowa district) version of bamboozlepalooza. He was not well received at all. Even had his own words ("I don't support privatization") thrown back at him twice. Iowans are simply not buying this bullshit. Being farmers they know bullshit and this is the most unadulterated bullshit most have ever encountered. Cong.Tom Latham got a similar a similar reception in his meetings.
I've heard this "$600 million" crap before. I've never seen any explanation. Seems like a number pulled out of the air to scare people. And to counter the $2 to $4 TRILLION cost that they are so afraid to discuss.
I have written Grassley twice expressing my views. I am sure he never reads any of his mail though.

citing standards of the American Academy of Actuaries:

From http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/opinion/24thu3.html?oref=login

'EDITORIAL: About That Number

Published: March 24, 2005

The Social Security trustees issued their annual report yesterday and said that by one measure, the shortfall in Social Security's finances jumped from $10.4 trillion last year to about $11 trillion this year. ... It's bad enough that the trustees began some of their calculations with that $10.4 trillion figure. It's arrived at by projecting the system's shortfall over infinity, rather than the usual 75-year time frame - as if the system's finances 10,000 years from now are a legitimate policy concern. Moreover, no less an authority than the American Academy of Actuaries is already on record debunking infinite projections as conveying "little if any useful information about the program's long-range finances" and "likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise ... into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated."

Compounding the subterfuge is that the difference between this year's $11 trillion eyepopper and last year's number - $600 billion - is being used as evidence of a scary deterioration in Social Security's finances. That's just wrong. The two monster numbers are actually the same quantity - different ways of expressing an unchanging level of debt at two different points in time. If you owe someone $1,000 in 10 years, for instance, you could retire the debt now with $500, or next year with $530. Your level of debt doesn't change, just the time point.'

Long scary paragraph saying "the sky is falling - do something"! I didn't ask the SSA to send me my projected benefits summary, someone in the WH must have done it for me? Did all 150 million wage earners get a letter today? At what cost? these sneaky back-door Repuke scum are pulling out the stops to plunder SS! Anyone else here get their letter?

Was this the usual summary of your SS record and projection of retirement benefits they send out yearly a few months before your birthday?

What interests me this time is the introductory letter which openly demands action on SS reform....

He's a fumbling, bumbling, inarticulate, hayseed, half-wit. His dumb, "good-ole-boy" image isn't an act - he really is that stupid. And he is able to manipulate other half-wit Iowans to vote for him. He picks some inconsequential straw-man issue and comes out swinging - pretending to be a crusader against the powers that be, rather than the shill he really is. He'll try to deliver whatever SS plan Bush wants.

The Bush plan is nothing more than a deliberate theft from the poor and middle class; an attempt to steal the massive amounts we have all contributed to the SS trust fund, and spend it on more tax breaks for the wealthy. Any Democrat who gives an inch, or cooperates in any way, should be buried in the next primary. I have told my reps that it will be my mission in life to do harm to the re-election efforts of anyone who cooperates with Bush in any way on SS.

I love it that the Chimperor's little war has bankrupted the country, and now, he can't make a single move right. He had that surplus, and he pissed it away to his friends.

Maybe americans aren't so stupid after all.

If George the Lesser's numbers drop one more time, I'm gonna be forced to do my happy gloat dance, and bake for the office, like I was planning on Nov. 1st.