Bamboozlepalooza Hits Prime Time

Tonight's press conference had little new information, but the dribs and drabs that did come out about the President's Social Security plan aren't going to make a lot of people happy once they unspin it and determine what he really said. He basically put forth a plan that includes 20% or more benefit cuts for 70% of the population. Note: 70% of the population now means "rich people." If you make $30,000 a year you're a rich person. And you deserve to have your Social Security benefit paid.

Since actual rich people only have around $90,000 subject to Social Security taxation, this really isn't the same kind of benefit cut for anyone who makes more than that. They don't pay at the same rate of their income. So the percentage cuts for the rich are protected by that ceiling, while the middle class continues to get squeezed. That's the way it usually goes in this country; The Republicans champion the rich, the Democrats champion the poor, and they compromise by screwing the middle class. Shouldn't work that way but it does.

That tactic is apparently what CBS News calls "nodding at the little guy." It apparently was "smiling" at the little guy before it was changed. I guess they realized a huge benefit cut for the entire middle (and I would add lower-middle) class constituted nodding over smiling.

The Orwellian speak was coming so fast it was hard to document it all. The notion that "everybody will get at least the same amount of dollars in their benefit check when they retire as they do today" is so bogus. If I was getting the same amount of dollars in my paycheck since 1960, I don't think it would stretch so much. And Josh Marshall noticed the same thing I did: that the President offered the opportunity that private accounts could be made up of Treasury Bonds, which would be "backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States." Of course, that doesn't apply to the Treasury notes in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are just worthless IOU's.

This "new" plan for Social Security is nothing new at all. It's the same phase-out proposal Bush has been pushing all year, and will "until the last day of my Presidency," according to Charlie Rangel from earlier in the week. It calls the huge benefit cuts needed to pay for private accounts "making the system solvent." Just a change in language. One could reasonably ask "If the benefit cuts make the system solvent, how are you going to pay for setting up the private accounts?" But that would require a journalist in the audience.