erim.net

Okay, this is seriously nuts, but it seems that our fearless leader has adopted a new strategy to pass his much-maligned Social Security “reform” - namely, don’t tell anybody. According to this article in the Washington Post, the budget proposal Bush presented to Congress on Monday contains actual details about his proposed plan to divert payroll taxes to private accounts. Details he couldn’t even manage to come up with during his big push for private accounts last year.

Just when you think this gang of jackals can’t get any more dishonest, venal, or incompetent - surprise! Funny, he didn’t even mention anything about Social Security in his State of the Union speech last week. At least, I don’t think he did. I was a bit, uh, toasted, and the friends I was watching the speech with were quite loud and derisive, to say the least. Still, all I remember was the usual, i.e. terrorism bad, economy good, dependency on oil bad, terrorism bad, gotta be resolute, etc and etc. In other words, the usual bullshit.

I’m no expert, but it seems quite unusual for a President to try to sneak some fairly revolutionary new policy into a budget proposal. I mean, we’re talking about diverting over $700 billion from Social Security revenues to private accounts in just seven years. That seems fairly significant to me, particularly since, so far as I know, he’s made no effort to address the issue of how to replace the missing money and continue to meet current obligations so grandma doesn’t have to sell a kidney and start eating cat food. No, don’t tell me, let me guess. We’re going to finance it all by selling more T-bills to the Chinese. Brilliant!

It’ll be interesting to see where this all goes. I can’t imagine it’s not going to raise a stink, even among the generally goose-stepping Republicans in Congress. Since the whole idea went over like a lead biscuit (as my Nana used to say) last time, how will our esteemed lawmakers react this time to an attempted end run? Will this strain the allegiance and cohesiveness of the brown shirts of the Republican party? Only time will tell.

Most likely, it’s just yet another example of how our President is not only dishonest, mean-spirited and ignorant, but he’s completely out of touch with reality as well. I swear, if his handlers didn’t have him on such a short leash, I’ll bet that, within a week, we’d get to enjoy the sight of him staggering drunkenly down Pennsylvania Avenue, clutching a bottle of Jim Beam and screaming obscenities at passing tourists. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.