BUT I CAN SEE HIS LIPS MOVING!: (day 78 of Jr's pony show)

[rodeodance]

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=695959

SOCIAL SECURITY
The Sideshow Lives On

On day 78 of what was originally billed as a 60 day roadshow, President Bush visited Milwaukee yesterday to keep forcing down a Social Security plan that the public has thus far refused to swallow. Once described as a "sideshow," the whole Social Security tour now "has the feel of a past-its-prime Broadway production." Unfortunately, some of the key actors in the whole debate are having trouble keeping it together.

CHERRY PICKED CONVERSATION PARTICIPANTS: It is not a surprise that participating in the president's Social Security conversations is an "invitation-only" honor. Just look at what happened in Holland when they didn't get to screen the questions first. But a recently discovered memo for an upcoming Social Security event in New York shows just how far the White House will go to get the "right" mix of people in the audience. Circulated by the group Women Impacting Public Policy, the memo didn't just announce the president's visit but "went on to solicit several types of people 'who he would like to visit with' –including a young worker who 'knows that could run out before they retire,' a young couple with children who like 'the idea of leaving something behind to the family' and a single parent who believes Bush's proposal for individual investment accounts 'would provide more retirement options and security' than the current system." Wait a second; it seems that the people solicited each represent "various arguments that Bush has been making for why Social Security should be overhauled." The memo ended by asking for "an immediate response" since they " to get names to the White House."

POZEN BACKS AWAY FROM BUSH'S SOCIAL SECURITY PLAN: In addition to private accounts, the president has incorporated progressive indexation into his Social Security overhaul. Robert Pozen, a former member of Bush's 2001 Commission to Strengthen Social Security, is the "man credited with inventing" progressive indexation and is the "investment executive President Bush lauds while selling his Social Security overhaul." Earlier this week, Pozen gave President Bush some more advice on Social Security: "'back away' from…the insistence that individual investment accounts be created in the program." In a number of "public appearances in Washington," Pozen criticized the privatization proposal and argued "the president's insistence that individual accounts be 'carved out' of Social Security's payroll tax … passage of a Social Security restructuring that would deal with the program's financial problems." Furthermore, Pozen called the president's continued "talk of an 'ownership society'" as "'a weak basis' for arguing for an overhaul."

THE SNAKE THAT ATE ITS OWN TAIL: There's another reason Pozen could give for why the president should "back away" from privatization: private accounts eat up half the gains made by the benefit reductions part of his plan. The White House fact sheet on progressive indexation boasts that "this reform would solve approximately 70 percent of the funding problems facing Social Security" but "that statement refers to a single year … and omits the effect of private accounts." According to a recent analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the benefit cuts actually "close about 59 percent of the Social Security overhaul ... but the private accounts would undo about half of that gain." Looking at the president's plan in its totality, the proposal "would accelerate" both the point at which Social Security is paying out more than it is taking in and also when the trust fund is exhausted. And trillions of dollars would still be needed to close the rest of the Social Security shortfall. For more on Bush's middle-class benefit cuts, see our Rebuttal of White House Spin on Benefit Cuts.

BUT I CAN SEE HIS LIPS MOVING!: Derrick Max is the executive director of two supposedly independent, nonpartisan groups: the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security and the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security, founded by the Business Roundtable. As the head of organizations advocating for a Social Security overhaul, Max was invited to testify at a hearing before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. But when the panel received his e-mailed testimony, it became quite apparent that the White House had already had its hands all over the document. Max had forgot to turn off the "track changes" feature in his word-processing program and the testimony "included editing comments made by an associate commissioner of Social Security on loan to the White House." There has now been a call for an investigation into whether this "ventriloquist" act "violated statues requiring the Social Security Administration to be 'nonpolitical and nonpartisan.'" Max's defense? "The real scandal here is that after 15 years of using Microsoft Word, I don't know how to turn off 'track changes,'" he said.

[CottonBear]

1. The stock market crash and Great Depression is why we have SS now.

This is what we need to tell anyone and everyone who will listen.
We need to put it on signs and call into radio shows and mention it and write letters to the editor about it.

[Inland]

2. On Broadway, a show this badly written and unenthusiastically acted

would have closed in the first week.

But then again, most Broadway shows are funded with my tax dollars, either.

Bush sucks.

[thereismore]

3. Good GOD is he still at it? What about presidenting? This guy

should be a traveling salesman. Snake oil, good for joints and all other ailments. Yes it will cure your cow, too.