McConnell boasts of 2005 effort to create private Social Security accounts

[eridani]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/24/1338879/-McConnell-boasts-of-2005-effort-to-create-private-Social-Security-accounts

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, handing Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes yet another golden issue in her campaign to thwart McConnell's sixth term in the U.S. Senate during a Thursday speech at the Louisville Rotary Club:

Though he hasn’t mentioned it much on the campaign trail over the past year, McConnell specifically touted his effort to push President George W. Bush’s plans to reform Social Security in 2005, which would have set up private accounts for retirees.

“After Bush was re-elected in 2004 he wanted us to try to fix Social Security,” said McConnell. “I spent a year trying to get any Democrat in the Senate — even those most reasonable Democrat of all, Joe Lieberman – to help us.”

Another way of looking at what happened is this: Bush's scheme for private Social Security accounts was so deeply unpopular that not even Joe Lieberman, who would go on to leave the Democratic Party and endorse John McCain in 2008, could support it. It was so unpopular that Republicans, even though they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, couldn't push it through.

[ladjf]

1. Why is it that terrible ideas seem attractive to Republicans? nt

[jwirr]

3. Because by putting more money into the market they have more to play with.

[kentuck]

2. Arrogant SOB

Thinks he cannot lose.