Times for the Truth on Social Security
If the people only knew what the Bush administration was peddling, why surely they would reject it outright as evil. So says The New York Times in a Monday editorial.
...the administration is manipulating information - a tacit, yet devastating, acknowledgement, we believe, that an informed public would reject privatizing Social Security.
The Times grasps at many straws in coming to such a conclusion. The thrust of the message is that there is no problem with Social Security, and if there is no problem with Social Security, the Republicans must be eager to "fix" it only so that they can destroy this 70-year-old institution.
No problem with Social Security? Here's the argument:
At a recent press conference, Mr. Bush exaggerated the timing of the system's shortfall by saying that Social Security would cross the "line into red" in 2018. According to Congress's budget agency, the system comes up short in 2052; according to the system'