Bush Administration: December 2004 Archives

If you felt the premises for, and the trumped up fears to support, Bush's invasion of Iraq were regrettable, be advised the very same huckster salesmanship is being applied to privatizing Social Security. Yesterday, President Bush completed his two day staged, no contest, no debate, summit for American economic policy. Using the exact same tactics to sell the invasion of Iraq to the American people, he made his pitch for privatizing Social Security. The tactics were clear and simple. Start with false premises and statements, add a huge layer of fear, and then push the sale for the transfer of tax dollars into the deep pockets of his corporate buddies who supported his election.

Let me say up front, this is not a simple issue, nor one that can be understood in a few sentences. I hope you will trust me when I say that you will have a much clearer picture of what is taking place with the Social Security issue by following this article to its end.

Reuters reports the following in an article entitled, Bush Says No Payroll Tax Hike for Social Security:

President Bush ruled out raising payroll taxes to help pay for Social Security reform on Thursday, leaving him few options other than a sharp increase in government borrowing to bankroll transition costs estimated at up to $2 trillion.

"We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem," said Bush, rejecting a solution advocated by some experts and Republican lawmakers.

The grand lie is very easy to detect. If the reform adds up to $2 trillion dollars to the national debt, the taxpayers will see an increase in their payroll taxes, just not this year. The current national debt is over 7.5 trillion dollars. This reform will bump that number to 9 or 9.5 trillion. If the President and his GOP led Congress hold to his promise of cutting the deficit in half over the next 5 years, the deficits each of those years will still amount to at least an additional 2 trillion dollars added to the national debt. That puts our national debt at 11 to 11.5 trillion dollars. A trillion dollars is 1,000 billion dollars, so we are talking 11 to 11.5 thousand billions of dollars of national debt.