ruffini
Bush's Benefit Increase
Yes, you heard it right. Increase.
But that probably isn't what you read in the morning papers. How does mainstream media react when it sees a conservative President pursuing a progressive, permanent fix for Social Security? Repeat the Big Lie:
"I believe the reformed system should protect those who depend on Social Security the most," he said in a nationally televised news conference. "So I propose a Social Security system in the future where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off." This is the first time Bush has backed a specific plan to reduce future benefits for tens of millions of Americans.
"Reduce future benefits for tens of millions of Americans." But those "future benefits" don't exist and under current law, can't be paid. Unlike a discretionary budget, where Congress has the ability to spend pretty much whatever it wants, Social Security cannot fund future benefits outside the Trust Fund, and by 2041, that Trust Fund will be able to pay 74% of "promised" benefits – a guaranteed benefit cut that is enshrined in current law.
Any reporter or politician who does not recognize these reduced benefits as the baseline for analyzing any and all changes to Social Security is simply being dishonest.
Even by Democrat standards, this Big Lie doesn't hold water. It used to be a cut when spending increases were held below inflation. But now it's a cut when Social Security benefits grow in real terms, and benefits for the poor grow even faster.
Welcome to the bizarre world of the Harry Reid's office and the Washington Post newsroom.
For a party that claims to support tax cuts only for the middle class, opposing Progressive Social Security is just strange. Democrats have ruled out personal accounts. By ruling out Progressive Social Security, they're endorsing the only options left: tax increases, or a train wreck that would forever undermine the Social Security system.
And if Democrats don't like how fast the benefits would grow with Progressive Social Security, here's their answer: personal accounts. It's the only proposal on the table that would actually increase benefits above the pie-in-the-sky "guaranteed" benefit the Democrats talk about.
This Big Lie from the left-leaning, conflict-obsessed MSM is spurring the rerelease of the Bush Social Security Calculator, an unabashedly reality-based tool that tells you how much Social Security can actually pay you, and how much your benefits would go up under Bush's personal accounts. Watch for that this weekend.