Bush Redefines “Better Off”
Bush Redefines “Better Off”
Last night, President Bush talked about cutting Social Security benefits for “people who are better off.” Who are these people? Bush adopted a proposal created by a guy named Richard Posen called “progressive price indexing.” That proposal would cut benefits for everyone except “the bottom 30 percent of earners, or those who make less than about $20,000 currently.”
So now people who “are better off” are defined as anyone earning over $20,000 a year. This is a dramatic change from the rhetoric Bush used to promote his tax cuts. A 3/8/01 White House fact sheet entitled “President’s Tax Relief Plan Gives Greatest Relief to Lowest Income Taxpayers,” touts that the “share of income taxes paid is reduced for all income groups below $100,000 in income.”
So to sell his tax cuts, Bush implied that anything under $100,000 was “low income.” Now, to sell his Social Security package, anything over $20,000 is “better off.”
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Each new Republican Social Security “scenario” – especially yesterday’s plan – highlights the need to raise the contribution ceiling. Unless we want the ENTIRE middle class to endure GIGANTIC benefit cuts.
Are the Republicans that afraid of tax increases for the donor-class that they’ll kiss-off all middle class voters over the age of 40 who AREN’T evangelical fundamentalists?
April 29th, 2005 at 1:22 pmI need a point clarified. President Bush says that he will index Social Security to a person’s income. Does this mean the average of their yearly income over a lifetime? Does it mean their income in the year before retirement? Or is it some kind of complicated mathematical scheme?
This strikes me as an important distinction because, while 30% of Americans may earn less than $20,000 a year, a person’s income typically rises over their lifetime. I don’t have any statistics right in front of me, but I’m willing to guess that substantially less than 30% of Americans are retiring with only an income of $20,000 a year, or that their average income is only $20,000 a year (indexed for inflation, of course) across their entire lifetime. If the President’s plan only guarantees the highest benefits to those Americans who earn $20,000 or less per year across their entire lifetimes, or only guarentees it to people who make $20,000 in the year before retirement, than it is likely that far more than 70% of Americans will see a benefit cut.
April 29th, 2005 at 1:57 pmMaybe he left off a zero?
April 29th, 2005 at 2:09 pm“Now, to sell his Social Security package, anything over $20,000 is “better off.â€?”
its not a “social security package.” Its a “social security cut.”
April 29th, 2005 at 2:28 pmAs he did a year ago, President Bush on Thursday held a rare prime-time press conference to bolster his agenda. But in just one year, the once invincible President Bush finds his agenda failing, his popularity plummeting, nominees like John Bolton stalled and his disciplined party machine beginnning to split at the seams.
The political circumstances may have changed, but not the man confronting them. Just as in his disturbing April 13, 2004 press conference, Bush once again displayed his shocking unwillingness to own up to any of his immense inventory of presidential mistakes. While his Rome burns, President Bush fiddles the same tune of stubborn dissembling and infallibility:
1. Social Security: New Story, Same Lies
2. Dubya Goes Both Ways
3. The Party of Ideas
4. The Coming Tax Fraud
5. Vladmir Putin: He Had Me at Hello
The more things change, the saying goes, the more things stay the same. Of George W. Bush, truer words were never spoken…
For more, see: “The More Things Change”
April 29th, 2005 at 2:35 pmFor more info on Presiden’t Bush’s Social Security Reform plan check out the website of the authors of the plan, the CATO Institute at http://www.socialsecurity.org/ or their main home page at http://www.cato.org
theres some really interesting stuff there, and since Bush refuses to devulge any new or actually pertinent information about the program you will have to get it from the horse’s mouth…
April 29th, 2005 at 2:48 pmWhen inflation really starts to kick in, $100,000 will be low income.
April 29th, 2005 at 2:53 pmIan – Pozen’s proposal deals with “career-average” earnings. So it depends on how they define “career-average.”
If we assume it is the average of your top 35 years, it’s a disincentive to low-income workers–working every year will raise your average earnings, and therefore lower your projected benefits.
April 29th, 2005 at 3:40 pmThanks Ken. Do you know if the 30% figure which Think Progress provides is based on a lifetime average, or on a current yearly income figure? If the later, do you have any idea what percentage of Americans make under $20,000 average earnings in their top 35 years of earning?
April 29th, 2005 at 3:46 pmIan, the only people I can think of, from the top of my head that make under $20,000 average earnings in their top 35 years of earning are homeless people and baggers on the corner of the street.
April 29th, 2005 at 4:27 pmIf this plan flies, the best thing we can all do is just to stop working and become those people, because why work when you can have top SS benefits if you don’t.
He is such a good president….:-(
Well since everyone thinks they are middle class and they are going to be well off some day, I guess Bush just cut everybody’s Social Security Check.
April 29th, 2005 at 4:27 pmShorter George Bush:
Everyone’s Social Security check is going to be less in 2041 so….
Why Not Start Now?
April 29th, 2005 at 4:30 pmDid you hear him mention the trader fees?..
April 29th, 2005 at 4:47 pmIf you chose to invest in the stock market..
He said they would be “fair”..
Sure, of course, and Iraq possess stockpiles of WMD’s.
My definition of “better off” would be if Bush, Delay and Frist a-l-l went a-w-a-y.
April 29th, 2005 at 5:13 pmYou just have to understand the man; when he says “better off” he means they’d be better off Social Security, and on some other system. It’s perfectly clear.
April 29th, 2005 at 5:36 pm$20K a year better off? Wow! I had no idea I was doing so well! I better cal lParis, maybe I can be the new Nicole…
April 29th, 2005 at 6:03 pmWhen is a benefit cut not a benefit cut? When does the repeal of planned future tax cuts constitute a tax increase? When White House spokesman and idiot non-savant Scott McClellan says so.
Perhaps the only thing more effective for the Republicans than having Chauncey Gardner as President of the United States is having him as press secretary…
April 29th, 2005 at 11:31 pmBush is a despicable sophist.
April 30th, 2005 at 2:51 amThursday night was more of the same. Not much detail, and a lot a vague statements. I now see that the House will have a “bill” ready by summer. I suppose that although the american people are not interested in the Presidents reform package, they will need to force it through for our own good, since they know best. Just like Mom and castor oil.
April 30th, 2005 at 8:23 amSorry folks, but this stuff is all coming to an end. Anything that you thought was for certain is no more. I do not expect to ever receive any social security benefits and absolutely no help from the US government. Hope you still have running water after it is all over.
Expect more war and the dissolution of the the US government as we once knew it.
Get used to having no money and very little of anything else.
It could all be different and it should be. But, it won’t be.
The only way out is to oust the mangey critters. They’re bad for us all.
166 billion dollars to spend on military operations in Iraq is insane. The US government will implode if it doesn’t stop.
April 30th, 2005 at 12:57 pmI know what you mean Ron.
April 30th, 2005 at 9:25 pmDid you hear that the Bushie is extended his Social Security tour/campaign?
Guess he realizes that his lame press conference didn’t do the trick..
I’m sick of paying for his useless out of town trips to nowhere…to speak to people who should be nowhere…
votetoimpeach.org
Peace.
Bush’s intent is a two-tier system: people making less than $20K and people making more than $200K, and it is his intent to ensure that there is no in-between. His ideal is a society of serfs serving the “needs” of the moneyed, serfs so consumed with survival that they pose no political opposition, serfs so desperate for jobs that they’ll go be soldiers for the wars that have no end. It isn’t that Bush doesn’t care about our post-retirement survival; he merely wants us to be wage-slaves in our waning years. As long as we can clean toilets, or bow-and-scrape-and-cater to the “chosen” people, we have value, and if we can’t, well too bad, just go die somewhere. This is just one piece of his grand plan to destroy this country, and never forget that his God is a vengeful God.
April 30th, 2005 at 9:35 pmBut his God told him to be president. Has God lost his marbles too.
May 1st, 2005 at 5:55 pmIt was all a misunderstanding. His God told him to be PRESENT (as opposed to inebriated).
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