Thursday, February 17, 2005
Why The Democrats Must Hold Firm On Social Security
A letter writer in Salon makes the following point:
Unfortunately, Bush has a couple of options overlooked in Farhad Manjoo's article. Either has the potential to shatter both the Democrats' front of solid opposition and the promise of Social Security. First, the president could revert to his well-established M.O.: Dangle a reasonable compromise before the Congress, and once it has been approved by both houses, have a Democrat-free reconciliation process drastically change its terms. Then the GOP leadership insists on a 24-hour passage of the fat, unread markup. The moderate Republicans, as they always have done in such situations, will cheerfully go along. Meanwhile, the back of their party discipline having broken on the original vote, the Democrats will be powerless to mount an effective resistance. Second, the president can push for the most massive of all benefit cuts, on the sophistic grounds that it doesn't cut benefits at all: Index future benefits only to prices, and not to wages. Numerous Republican moderates have floated the idea, few Democrats have specifically rejected it, and explaining why it is the most drastic of benefits cuts, a poisoned gift that keeps on taking, requires careful explanation with math in it. Most Americans are under the impression that SS benefits are purely price-indexed right now and won't feel like they're losing anything. (Bush has mentioned this option, tangentially, in several of his speeches. The risible flounder last week that Bush himself called "muddled" may have explained nothing; but its centerpiece clearly was the elimination of wage indexing.) Bush may spring the second trap a couple of weeks before the vote. He will announce that it constitutes "no reduction in benefits." We will have little time to educate the public, and we'd better have a powerful counterframe ready in advance.Forewarned is forearmed!-- Royce Buehler
Comments:
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The only quibble I have with the letter writer is the obsolete notion of a moderate Republican. By simply remaining in a party that it is completely operated and maintained by extremists, the proud "centrists" -- regardless of which party they're in -- are living in a make believe world.
Pick a side and fight like hell, but don't even think about claiming center field. It no longer exists because of the winner-take-all mindset of our fascist overlords.
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Pick a side and fight like hell, but don't even think about claiming center field. It no longer exists because of the winner-take-all mindset of our fascist overlords.
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