The SanityPrompt

This blog represents some small and occasional efforts to add a note of sanity to discussions of politics and policy. This blog best viewed with Internet Explorer @ 1024x768

Monday, May 02, 2005

Please Get Your Story Straight

One more time:

George Bush is either lying when he says that the Social Security Trust Fund is an accounting fiction which means he is being patently dishonest.

or

If the Social Security Trust Fund is merely a drawerful of worthless IOUs, George Bush is complicit in theft of a particularly deceitful larcenous kind. For he is overtaxing workers and spending their money (and has been for four years) with the promise that the over-taxing is necessary to build up the long term surplus to pay retirees benefits between 2018 and 2041 (or 2054 if you believe the CBO). But he is admiting that he doesn't believe there is any reason for the government to honor this IOU. Meanwhile, the true deficit has swelled to over $700 billion annually under his watch because he can't stop giving money away to rich people through tax cuts and giving program money away to people through the passage of new spending legislation without any payment mechanisms - see the prescription drug benefit. If he were an accountant in the private sector he would be in jail awaiting Bernie Ebbers, David Skilling and Ken Lay.