No, it was a self defeating proposition because what retirees need is more security, not more risk. There are already IRA's, 401K's, and deferred compensation plans that allow folks to have control of their retirement savings. SS is the one plan that offered a bare subsistance income that was not risky. The other plans still offer ways to increase retirement income but at some risk. Bush's plan would have just added to the beaurecracy and make SS subject to the whims of Wall Street.
So you say, but I never hear liberals saying that just as I never hear republicans saying "it's ever man for himself." The pipe dream of moderates is a proper balance between taxation and spending. Either cut spending to reduce taxes or increase taxes to cover spending. If Congress was forbidden to operate in a deficit mode (as many state legislatures are) then they would have to be more responsible with our money. They couldn't spend money on pork to get re-elected because it would rais their constituents taxes and get him ousted. They could not cut taxes to get re-elected because vital services would disppear and get them ousted. A natural balance point would be found where we pay just enough in taxes to cover just enough government services.
And this Amigo is where the divide starts to widen. What exactly is enough? You don't want to hear my response because it won't be much. I know you personally don't fall into that category, however, for the life of me I can't figure out why so many are so content on providing so much for those who are all too content to just sit on their lazy azzes and do their best sponge imitation. It really pisses me off. BOOOOO big gvt and all the B/S programs!!!
You are just repeating what Rush says. It's BS. As Red says above, it is about balance. When the balance gets too far off, throughout history, there have been wars and revolutions. The French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the democratic reform in Russia in 1989, and many others. If wealth is too concentrated in the hands of a few, and the poor suffer too badly, they eventually revolt. The US was heading this way as recently as 1968, with the riots in Watts, Detroit, and Chicago. The balance point is not precise. You will take too little from the rich and still risk civil unrest, or take too much and suffer some abuse of the system. We chose to solve the problem and err on the side of taking too much. Clinton passed welfare reform in 1996, and I think it was a $60 Billion reduction in welfare spending. Show me Bush's action. Oh, there was none. Alan Greenspan has called Clinton the best Republican president in quite some time. Clinton raised taxes on the rich, cut the deficit, balanced the budget, saw excellent job creation in America, and inflation was low. That was after inheriting a poor economy from Bush I "its the economy stupid". Is all right with the world of US social programs? No. Do we need to work on fixing medicare and social security? Yes. Medicare is about 3 times larger problem looming than social security if the growth in cost of medical care is not controlled. But the evidence on Clinton vs. Bush I or II is that the democrats have been much more fiscally responsible. That's just the fact based on the last 20 years. Edited: personally I'd like to see a welfare fraud enforcement division, funded out of the expected reduction in benefits paid fraudulently. I don't believe there is any check in the system (and this is a HUGE part of the problem), or it is so small it is as good as nothing. If people had the threat of being caught and sent to jail, fraud would go down. Edited II: Then we have Bush II and the republican congress passing a 420 Billion Medicare Drug bill, that 3 months later we find out they lied and its really a 600 Billion plan over 5 years, with no tax to support it, its all planned deficit spending. Maybe that doesn't qualify as "distributing the wealth" since we're not taxing anyone, but not in my fiscal conservative book. That will just run up the deficit, devalue the dollar, drive up the price of oil and gas at the pump, then we pay for it in higher gas prices, indirectly. Then the repubs made it illegal for the govt. to negotiate for volume discounts on the drugs, ensuring the highest profit possible to the drug companies, and helping the big pharma CEO's claim their $20 million per year bonuses and stock option gains. And that's not redistribution of the wealth? Everyone pays the higher gas prices and inflated prices, and the CEO's and execs in big pharma pocket windfall gains. I guess its reverse wealth redistribution! That's what the repubs do. They are not called the party of big business for nothing. Then they catch you with the shell game in campaigns. They campaign on religous issues, like abortion and gay marriage, which don't affect most of our daily lives directly, don't really do anything about abortion, get the office, and then steal from everyone to give to their skull and bones friends from Yale.
You see anyone proposing a new $600 Billion dollar, 5 year, spending program, like the medicare drug plan, and no offsets in spending and no taxes to cover it, like the republicans did?
Where exactly does the notion that all our tax dollars go to lazy people who sit around and do nothing come from? Some of it goes to military pensions, you know. Most goes to medicare recipients who are retired or disabled people who worked and paid into the system, not lazy slugs. The same goes for social security--elderly and disabled people who worked all their lives and are now unable to. Even jobless people on welfare can only stay in the program for a few years. Some are lazy bums, but that won't wash for very long anymore, since the welfare reforms of the last 20 years. Most are women with small children and no means of support. Even they must seek training and eventually find a job to receive the welfare check and food stamps.
Rec, I'm talking about the career system abusers and you know as well as I do that they are out there. The ones that use food stamps to buy steak for their dogs, but drive a caddy escalade. The ones that don't want to find work because we provide it all for them. The ones that just LOVE those liberals that create BIG govt and will just give give give, free this and free that. We ALL know it isn't FREE. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
Where are these people in the statistics? I don't think they exist very much except as sterotypes. Welfare and food stamps have been tightened up considerably. Who are you kidding? The conservatives do it too!. "No Child Left Behind" is a prime example of a huge unfunded government mandate fromt he republicans. The waste of resources within the huge underfunded new Department of Homeland Security is another.
