II. Articles on Social Security
Social Security Lessons
August 15, 2005
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Social Security turned 70 yesterday. And to almost
everyone's surprise, the nation's most successful
government program is still intact. Just a few months
ago the conventional wisdom was that President Bush
would get his way on Social Security. Instead, Mr.
Bush's privatization drive flopped so badly that the
topic has almost disappeared from national discussion.
But I'd like to revisit Social Security for a moment,
because it's important to remember what Mr. Bush tried
to get away with.
A Curriculum on Social
Security
for Congregational
Study Groups
What the churches are doing:
An excellent overview
of Social Security
and why it must be
preserved. In a PDF File
Hill GOP Eyes Social
Security Reform
By James G. Lakely
Republicans leaders in Congress
are taking
the lead in crafting Social Security reform,
saying President Bush was making little
progress on the landmark reform proposal.
When congressional leaders met with Mr.
Bush last week, they were surprised that
the president didn't know how much trouble
his plan was in, said a source close to the
meeting who requested anonymity.
The Secret GOP Social
Security Play Book.
The Yurica
Report obtained a copy
of the actual GOP Congressional
guide to Senators and Representatives
on how to sell "Reforming America's
Social Security System for Future
Generations." It reveals what words
they must use: "Personalization" not
"privatization." Appeal to youth, quote
Dietrich Bonhoeffoer, offer an
alternate reality! This is a large PDF
File. Don't miss it.
Social Security Solution:
Make the Old Work Until
Death
By JOHN TIERNEY I realize
I'm being impolitic.
Americans now feel entitled to spend nearly a third
of their adult lives in retirement. The problem isn't
that Americans have gotten intrinsically lazier.
They're just responding to a wonderfully intentioned
system that in practice promotes greed and sloth.
Rudderless with Rove
on Social
Security By
Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift
President Bush managed to alienate
just about
everybody with his latest proposal to reform and
modernize the Social Security system. Progressive
indexing is a fancy term for cutting benefits for
anyone earning over $30,000, which is 70 percent
of the working
population.
Highlights
of the GOP’s Strategy
to Convince America to
End Social
Security By Katherine
Yurica
It’s called, “A Guide to Social Security Reform,”
and its title is “Saving Social Security.” It was
written “courtesy of the White House Office of
Communications.” House Republican Conference
Chairman, Deborah Pryce and Senate Republican
Conference Chairman, Rick Santorum signed off
on it. It’s purpose? To teach the GOP senators
and representatives how to sell a program that
is designed to be the first step in destroying
Social
Security.
Smear Against AARP
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The slime campaign has begun against
AARP,
which opposes Social Security privatization.
There's no hard evidence that the people involved
- some of them also responsible for the "Swift
Boat" election smear - are taking orders from
the White House. So you're free to believe that
this is an independent venture. You're also
free to believe in
the tooth fairy.
For Bush, a Long Embrace
of
Social Security Plan
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - The conservative economists
and public policy experts who trooped in to brief George
W. Bush on Social Security not long after he was re-
elected governor of Texas in 1998 came with their own
ideas about how to overhaul the
retirement program.
Spearing the Beast
By PAUL KRUGMAN
President Bush isn't trying to reform Social Security.
He isn't even trying to "partially privatize" it. His
plan
is, in essence, to dismantle the program, replacing it
with a system that may be social but doesn't provide
security. And the goal, as with his tax cuts, is to
undermine the legacy
of Franklin Roosevelt.
Benefit Cuts Would Offset
Account Gains
White House Explains
The Proposal Further
By Jonathan Weisman
The White House offered further explanation of President
Bush's Social Security proposal yesterday, detailing how
contributions to new personal investment accounts would
be offset by dollar-for-dollar reductions in Social Security's
guaranteed benefits.
Participants Would Lose
Some Profits
From Accounts
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Under the White House Social Security plan,
workers who opt to divert some of their payroll
taxes into individual accounts would ultimately
earn benefits more than those under the traditional
system only if the return on their investments
exceed the amount their money would have
accrued under
the traditional system.
White House Press Conference
on
Social Security
The following is the
transcript of the White House
news conference on Social Security as recorded by
Federal News Service
Inc.
The Social Security
Push: 3 Intricate
Balancing Acts
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
TAMPA, Fla., Feb. 4 - In barnstorming on behalf
of his Social Security plan, President Bush tried
to translate his base's deep loyalty to him - evident
in the rousing receptions he received over the last
two days in five states that he carried in November -
into support for one of the most ambitious changes
in social welfare policy since
the New Deal.
Aging Population Poses
Global Challenges Health
Care,
Other Rising
Costs to Strain Budgets
in U.S. and
Abroad By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post
Staff Writer
Gambling With Your Retirement
By PAUL KRUGMAN
A few weeks ago I tried to explain the logic
of Bush-style Social Security privatization:
it is, in effect, as if your financial adviser
told you that you wouldn't have enough
money when you retire - but you shouldn't
save more. Instead, you should borrow a lot
of money, buy stocks and
hope for capital gains.
Many Unhappy Returns
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The fight over Social Security is,
above all, about what kind of society
we want to have. But it's also about
numbers. And the numbers the
privatizers use just don't
add up.
Social Security Formula
Weighed
Bush Plan Likely to
Cut Initial Benefits
By Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen
The Bush administration has signaled that it will
propose changing the formula that sets initial
Social Security benefit levels, cutting promised
benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades,
according to several Republicans close to the
White House.
Government Use of Propaganda,
Social Security
SSA Altered Communications
to Undermine
Public Confidence
Prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman
Monday,
February 28, 2005
Retirement Turns Into
a Rest Stop as
Benefits Dwindle
By EDUARDO PORTER and
MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
For John A. Lemoine, retirement has been hard work.
Forced to take an early pension package at AT&T
three years ago, Mr. Lemoine, 54, a former building
manager who once made more than $70,000 a year
handling the operations of several AT&T sites, soon
found that retirement was something he just
could
not afford.
Little Black
Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Social Security privatization really is like tax
cuts, or the Iraq war: the administration keeps
on coming up with new rationales, but the plan
remains the same. President Bush's claim that
we must privatize Social Security to avert an
imminent crisis has evidently fallen flat. So now
he's playing the race card.
Memo Gives New Details
on Workings
of Bush's Social Security
Plan
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 - Under the plan President
Bush outlined Wednesday night in his State of the
Union Message, retirees' traditional Social Security
benefits would be reduced if they had diverted some
of their tax money into private investment accounts,
according to a memorandum that the chief actuary
of the Social Security system sent to the White
House on the day
of the president's address.
Stopping the Bum's Rush
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The people who hustled America into a tax cut
to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a
war to eliminate imaginary weapons are now
trying another bum's rush. If they succeed,
we will do nothing about the real fiscal threat
and will instead dismantle Social Security, a
program that is in much better financial shape
than the rest
of the federal government.
The Social Security
Fear Factor
A New York Times Editorial
If you've lent even one
ear to the administration's
recent comments on Social Security, you have
no doubt heard President Bush and his aides
asserting that a $10 trillion shortfall threatens the
retirement system - and the economy itself. That
$10 trillion hole is the basis of the president's claim
last month that "the [Social Security] crisis is now."
It's also the basis of the administration's claim that
the cost of doing nothing to reform the system
would be far greater than
the cost of acting now.
The British Evasion
By PAUL KRUGMAN
We must end Social Security as we know it, the
Bush administration says, to meet the fiscal burden
of paying benefits to the baby boomers. But the
most likely privatization scheme would actually
increase the budget deficit until 2050. By then the
youngest surviving baby boomer
will be 86 years old.
Choose and Lose
By BARRY SCHWARTZ
THERE are three arguments being made in
favor of privatizing part of Social Security.
First, the Social Security Trust Fund needs
money and privatization will, in the long run,
increase the amount of money available to
retirees. Second, privatization will give people
choice, and choice is good. And third, "it's
your money," and you ought to be able to
do with it as you wish. Each of these arguments
is dubious, or disingenuous,
or both.
Bush Lays Out a Plan
to Revise
the Social Security
System
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 17, 2004; Page A06
President Bush declared yesterday that
the Social Security system has already
reached a "crisis" stage as he made the
case for an expansive second-term domestic
agenda that would dramatically restructure
the nation's retirement program, tax code
and legal liability
system.
Vast Borrowing Seen
in Altering
Social Security
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 - The White House
and Republicans in Congress are all but certain
to embrace large-scale government borrowing
to help finance President Bush's plan to create
personal investment accounts in Social Security,
according to administration officials, members of
Congress and
independent analysts.
Buying Into Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN
As the Bush administration tries to persuade
America to convert Social Security into a giant
401(k), we can learn a lot from other countries
that have already gone down that road. Information
about other countries' experience with privatization
isn't hard to find. For example, the Century Foundation,
at www.tcf.org provides
a wide range of links.
Social Security Reform,
With One Big Catch
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
December 12, 2004
WASHINGTON
OF all the arguments being made to
replace part of Social Security with
private retirement accounts, few are more
seductive and more misleading than the
prospect of earning higher returns. Get ready
to hear a lot about this next week, when
President Bush is host for a two-day economic
conference that is expected to focus sharply
on Social Security.
Bush May Be Borrowing
Trouble With Social
Security Plan
by Ronald Brownstein.
Just in case the
prospect of a Social Security overhaul
wasn't complicated enough, get ready
for a numbingly abstruse concept that
may prove to be one of the pivotal points
in the debate: the difference between
implicit and
explicit debt.
Warning on Social Security
By EDMUND
L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - Calling the
current system of Social Security
benefits unsustainable, a top economic
adviser to President Bush on Thursday
strongly implied that any overhaul of the
system would have to include major cuts
in guaranteed benefits
for future retirees.
Social Security Doing
Just Fine
By Mark Weisbrot
You may have heard that our Social
Security system is headed for trouble
when the generation known as the baby
boom begins to retire. You
heard wrong.
Bush Now Directing Attention
to
Revamping Social Security
The president believes his
plan to
allow private investment will help
the GOP and his legacy.
By
Edwin Chen
Times Staff Writer
Tax burden shifts to
the middle
New report could roil
presidential campaign
By Jonathan Weisman
Since 2001, President Bush's tax cuts have shifted
federal tax payments from the richest Americans to
a wide swath of middle-class families, the Congressional
Budget Office has found, a conclusion likely to roil the
presidential election
campaign.
How Bush Is Plundering
Social Security
Slate Magazine reports
the growth of
a huge American deficit that endangers
the world economy and reveals how
the Bush administration is plundering
the Social Security funds to hide its
bankrupt policies. By Daniel Gross
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