Abnormal Interests

The leader on the opposition party should somehow be more forthcoming that the leader of the country! What's wrong with this picture?

Here's the truth, Bush wants to set the stage for the long-term elimination of guaranteed Social Security benefits if not the whole program. He and his cronies do not want to fix the minor problems with Social Security and anymore than they want to fix, or even talk about, the much larger problem with Medicare. They want to set the stage for their eventual destruction. Their hope is that they will both implode under the weight of increasing massive deficits. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a well documentmented strategy call "starve the beast." Its strongest advocate is Grover Norquist. Even Bush himself endorsed the doctrine publicly at a news conference on August 24, 2001,

So we have the tax relief plan, which is important for fiscal stimulus, coupled with Social Security being off limits except for -- except for emergency. That now provides a new kind -- a fiscal straightjacket for Congress. And that's good for the taxpayers, and it's incredibly positive news if you're worried about a federal government that has been growing at a dramatic pace over the past eight years and it has been.

And Whitehouse Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer said on September 4, 2001,

But not a lot of wiggle room means that Congress has a fiscal straitjacket imposed upon itself. Not a bad outcome.

We don't hear this kind of language from the Whitehouse these days because they figured out that it is not good tactics to reveal strategy.

Under the rubric of "Restore budget discipline" Stephen Moore of the CATO Institute said as recently as September 2, 2004,

Congress needs to be put in a fiscal straitjacket that will help lower deficit spending, keep interest rates low, and free more resources for private sector spending.

Bottom line, President Bush won't tell us how he would solve the problem with Social Security because he doesn't want it solved.