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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Elections & Legislation : Labor : Political-Economy : Regime : Right Wing |
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Social Security and Budget Backlash Bombs Bush: Republicans Are Chastened About Social Security Plan |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Robin Toner
(No verified email address) |
26 Feb 2005
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"We've yet to find one where there was an enthusiastic reception," said John Rother, AARP's policy director. "The most positive reception people are getting is lots of questions, and there's significant skepticism. This is proving to be a tough sell, and our polling suggests that the more people know, the harder the sell." |
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - After a bruising weeklong recess, Congressional Republicans will return to work on Monday chastened by public skepticism over President Bush's plan for private accounts in Social Security. One leading Republican, Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, acknowledged that the opposition was better organized while another, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, said bipartisan compromise was unlikely unless the president can change the public mood.
"It's a heavy lift," Mr. Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday, after a week spent crisscrossing his home state to play host to 17 town-hall-style meetings. He said the sessions ended "without my getting much of a consensus of where people are, except general confusion," and with the president still facing "a major job of educating people."
The story was much the same throughout the country, as Republicans - some already skittish over Mr. Bush's plan - spent the week trying to assuage nervous constituents. Instead of building support for Mr. Bush's proposal to allow younger workers to divert payroll taxes into private retirement accounts, some of the events turned into fractious gripe sessions and others did not go nearly as well as their hosts had hoped.
Those listening sessions also forced Republicans to confront another reality: opposition to the spending cuts outlined in Mr. Bush's 2006 budget. The $2.57 trillion budget will dominate the Congressional agenda for the next three weeks. But instead of fighting Democrats, Republicans - many of whom campaigned on slashing spending and cutting the federal deficit - are at odds with themselves over which programs to cut and which to spare.
Mr. Grassley, whose position as Senate finance chairman makes him the linchpin of any Social Security deal, said he still intended to negotiate a compromise between Democrats and Republicans. But he warned that lawmakers would not act unless there was pressure from voters, and he said voters would not put pressure on Congress unless the president persuaded them that private accounts are necessary.
"I think 90 percent of the lifting is with the president," he said. Mr. Grassley said, when asked if he was reaching out to Democrats, "That process is starting, but it's starting very slow because too many Republicans and Democrats - how would you say it? - don't have the confidence that this issue is ever going to come up."
Mr. Santorum complained that he was dogged all week by opponents of the White House plan who dominated news coverage. Mr. Santorum, who is the third-ranking Republican in the Senate leadership and chairman of the subcommittee on Social Security, was heckled by college students - the very audience the Bush administration was counting on - and peppered with questions from retirees.
"Clearly the other side is better organized," Mr. Santorum said. "They got people to all these events. They had seniors lined up to ask questions, they had staff people running up passing them notes."
Even so, Mr. Santorum described himself as encouraged at the level of interest; both he and Mr. Grassley said it was far too early to predict the outcome.
Senior Republican Congressional aides said the tone of the response was not unexpected, particularly given traditional nervousness among older Americans about potential changes in Social Security. They said that lawmakers would sort through the reactions when they gathered on Capitol Hill this week, and that the meetings back home would no doubt color how Republicans proceeded.
" It is going to be those personal experiences they had out on the road that will shape their views," said Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader.
Mr. Bush, meanwhile, speaking in his radio address on Saturday, declared himself pleased with how the recess week went.
"I am pleased with the progress of the national discussion on this issue, and I look forward to hearing everyone's ideas when the Congress returns," Mr. Bush said. He added, "Some in Washington want to deny that Social Security has a problem, but the American people know better and you have the power to determine the outcome of this debate."
AARP, the powerful retirees' organization that opposes private accounts financed by payroll taxes, has been tracking the meetings, and offered a different assessment.
"We've yet to find one where there was an enthusiastic reception," said John Rother, the group's policy director. "The most positive reception people are getting is lots of questions, and there's significant skepticism. This is proving to be a tough sell, and our polling suggests that the more people know, the harder the sell."
Mr. Grassley acknowledged that the Social Security plan stood in stark contrast to the last major piece of social welfare legislation that moved through his committee: a bill overhauling Medicare and creating a prescription drug benefit. "A good share of both parties felt that something needed to be done on Medicare," he said, "and so there was impetus in both parties to at least look at it." But on Social Security, he said, "there's too much of a feeling that it's better to wait a while before you do something."
Democrats, many of whom held their own constituent meetings, were practically giddy at the Republicans' dilemma.
"The reviews are in: Santorum's Social Security roadshow was a bust," crowed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Friday, in a headline that topped a list of excerpts from news accounts.
"They have run into a real hornet's nest," said Brendan Daly, spokesman for Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader. Mr. Daly said Democrats planned events for next week to keep the focus on Social Security.
The fallout from the recess might deepen the division between the parties on Capitol Hill. Democrats have insisted that they will be united in their opposition to the Bush plan, and on Friday, Senator Jon Corzine, the New Jersey Democrat who is running for governor of that state, said he expected that feeling to intensify.
"I can't imagine that people are going to come back more fearful that there is sort of a drumbeat of support for the private account concept," Mr. Corzine said. He held three constituent meetings devoted to Social Security, he said, including two featuring representatives of AARP.
"It is clearly something that seniors are rejecting in very, very large numbers," Mr. Corzine said, "and increasingly it feels to me that even folks moving down the age spectrum are turning against it."
At least one Republican, Representative Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, said she would urge colleagues to "be really cautious about what we do." Ms. Capito, whose district includes a substantial population of older people and who has not taken a position on private accounts, said the response from constituents was "probably more negative than positive."
Like a number of other Republicans, Ms. Capito said she heard repeatedly from voters who were worried about Mr. Bush's budget, which would substantially cut or eliminate 150 federal programs.
Another Republican, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said he heard so many complaints about cutbacks for vocational training grants that he has decided to oppose Mr. Bush on that issue. "Some of the programs that the president has eliminated may not be possible," he said.
Congress has failed to adopt a budget resolution for two of the last three years; a failure to do so this year, when Mr. Bush has made fiscal restraint a high priority, would be an embarrassment to the White House and a defeat for the Republican leadership in Congress. The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Judd Gregg, said meeting the president's spending goals would be a challenge.
"Even though they may talk a fiscally conservative game, in the end, when they are asked to vote, they would rather not have to vote for something that will actually be real," he said.
Campaign Against AARP
By The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - USA Next, a conservative group that is supporting President Bush's plan to revamp Social Security with a campaign criticizing the AARP, will send a letter to as many as 500 conservative activists this week signaling future lines of attack, officials at USA Next said.
The group, which was criticized last week when it tested an advertisement linking the AARP to support for same-sex marriage, said it planned to attack the AARP on other positions. "What the liberals cannot hide is the shameful record of liberal activism AARP has compiled over the years," a draft of the letter says.
Officials at AARP say the group is nonpartisan and has never taken a position on same-sex marriage.
Carl Hulsecontributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
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Bush Goes From Alarmist To Pollyanna With Ease |
by Harley Sorensen
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Feb 2005
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In 1978, when he was running for the House of Representatives, George Bush told a reporter that Social Security would go broke within 10 years.
He was wrong. It went "broke" in four years.
Bush's proposed cure for a broken Social Security system then was what it is now: Take money out of the system and put it into private accounts. It was as strange an idea then as it is now.
(For the record, Bush lost his 1978 bid to represent Texas' 19th Congressional District.)
In 1982, a mere four years after Bush got sent packing, the Social Security Trust Fund was "nearly depleted," according to the Social Security Web site.
But: "No beneficiary was shortchanged because the Congress enacted temporary emergency legislation that permitted borrowing from other Federal trust funds and then, later, enacted legislation to strengthen ... Fund financing. The borrowed amounts were repaid with interest within four years."
System broke, system fixed. Just like that. Dang! That meant Bush would have to wait till he was a second-term president before anyone would listen to his "sky is falling" alarmism again.
In a way, I sympathize with the president. His Big Brother scheme to coerce people into investing and thus become responsible for their own retirement income, seems like a good mix of hardnosed capitalism and idealistic socialism enforced by Big Government.
If it were practical, I'd be all for it. But it isn't.
Its big problem is it requires us to rob Peter to pay Paul. The system is, without a doubt, looking at a shortfall some time in the future, and yet Bush seeks to fix it by taking money out of it, handing that money over to young investors to invest only as the government sees fit, and then borrowing to make up the shortfall?
Our president is somewhat of a Pollyanna.
That's part of his charm. You could see that when he nominated a Spanish-surnamed man to become our next attorney general. In video of the two of them together, you could see Bush just bursting with pride that he had promoted the very European-looking Alberto Gonzalez to become America's new Grand Inquisitor ... uh, attorney general.
Gonzalez has been accused of advocating, or at least condoning, torture of "war on terror" prisoners. Whatever the truth of the matter, he botched the job of advising the president on the treatment of prisoners. Here's what he should have written:
"The United States of America will tolerate no mistreatment of its prisoners whatsoever, nor will it turn over its prisoners to third parties who mistreat prisoners."
Period.
(Is there anything more cowardly than torturing a person who has no way to resist or fight back?)
If democracy and freedom are "on the move," as Bush claims, then we should be leading the charge, not demeaning ourselves by sponsoring or condoning medieval regressions.
And, incidentally, if you look at a list of countries new to democracy, ask yourself how many of those countries were aided by the U.S. and how many by ... Russia! A bit ironic, don't you think?
One wonders what the idealistic Bush was thinking when he nominated John Negroponte to become director of national intelligence, a new job in our ever-expanding federal government.
Negroponte has some fine qualities, to be sure. He's experienced and competent and would probably look good in a uniform topped by a service cap with a shiny black visor. But his background indicates he's either completely unburdened by anything resembling moral principles or he's dumber than a Toledo mud hen, take your pick.
Is this the guy we want overseeing the FBI (along with 14 other federal intelligence agencies)?
The darkest part of Negroponte's history, in brief, was his activity when he was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, during the Reagan administration.
At that time, according to numerous published reports, he falsified State Department human rights reports, overlooking the so-called "death squads" organized and led by the CIA. Christian missionaries and other opponents of the existing Honduran regime were murdered by the CIA-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16, according to news reports.
If this is so, and it appears to be, Negroponte is either the Scarecrow or the Tin Man, lacking either a brain or a heart.
Is America so impoverished of talent, one wonders, that our president has to nominate seriously tarnished men to hold some of our most important positions?
There often seems to be something seriously wrong with Bush's thinking process. The most startling example of that was his brusk rejection, early in his first term, of the Kyoto agreements to reduce global warming. Those accords went into effect last week, with the world's greatest single polluter, the United States of America, conspicuously absent.
In fairness to Bush, the U.S. Senate rejected the Kyoto pact by a 95-0 vote during the Clinton administration. The reasoning? Reducing climate-changing emissions might be bad for business.
And the excuse: Developing countries, like China and India, are not held to the same strict standards as the industrial giants.
However flawed as it might be, the Kyoto process, approved by 140 nations, is a start.
It is quite possible that at some point man-made global warming will reach the point of no return. If we wait too long to combat it, we may never be able to overcome it.
And, interestingly, the most dire predictions made so far have almost all turned out to be too conservative. The destruction of our planet is proceeding faster than most scientists ever expected.
In the 20th century, global temperatures rose more than one degree Fahrenheit. That doesn't seem like much, but it already has had a significant effect. In the 21st century, temperatures are expected to rise at least 4 degrees and perhaps as much as 10 degrees.
Global warming appears to be a far more serious problem than international terrorism, yet Bush ignores it.
When it comes to Social Security, easily repaired, Bush is Chicken Little. When it comes to global warming, a far greater threat to our nation and the planet, Bush becomes Pollyanna.
Bush may be the nice man his fans give him credit for being, but his judgment seems seriously impaired. Why clear-thinking Republicans are so tolerant of his missteps is another of life's mysteries.
Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays in the San Francisco Chronicle.
© 2005 San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/sorensen/ |
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