[T]he President has always been someone who has worked to elevate the tone. — White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 2/08/05

“There’s Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times.” — President Bush, 9/3/00

In his speech in Detroit, President Bush said, “To keep America competitive, we’ve got to make sure that the education system works.”

FACT: In his 2006 budget, President Bush is eliminating “$1.1 billion in state vocational education grants, $496 million for educational technology grants, and $437 million for safe and drug free schools.”

Update: All of the rapid response blog posts have been updated now that the transcript of the President’s Detroit speech has been released.

In his speech in Detroit, President Bush said, “Best of all, the accounts would be replacing the empty promises of government with the real assets of ownership.” The “worthless IOUs” myth is one debunked by The Century Foundation’s Social Security Network:

“When investors become worried about the economy and the stock market, they “flee to safety” by selling their other securities in exchange for U.S. Treasury bonds and bills. Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, U.S. Treasury securities are considered to be the safest, most reliable investment worldwide. Because the federal government is legally obligated to pay back interest and principal on those securities, it would take an almost unimaginable calamity for a default to occur. Social Security’s trust funds, which now amount to $1.5 trillion and are expected to grow to $5.3 trillion by 2018, hold nothing but U.S. Treasury securities.

Alan Greenspan, now the Federal Reserve chairman, led a bipartisan commission in 1983 that recommended changes to Social Security explicitly to produce the large trust funds that the system will draw on to pay for the baby boom generation’s retirement from roughly 2008 to 2030. Those reforms, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, were widely hailed at the time by both parties as a model of effective government. If anything, those reforms have turned out to be even more successful than originally imagined, as the improved forecasts in recent years for the program demonstrate. The central reason for that success was the Greenspan Commission’s idea of building up trust funds invested in safe U.S. Treasury securities.”

In his speech in Detroit, President Bush said, “A personal account would be your account, you would own it, and the government could never take it away.”

FACT: President Bush is trying to capitalize on the fact that Americans like to own things to sell his program to chop Social Security benefits. The reality of his plan is a far cry from the private ownership he’s touting, however. For example, instead of private plans that let Americans control their own investments, there are tight restrictions on which conservative stocks and bonds the public will be allowed to buy. And, the New York Times writes, “the more restrictions there are, the harder it would be for people to achieve the outsized returns the administration has generally promoted to sell the public on private accounts.” Also, Bush has played up the fact that his accounts can be passed on to one’s heirs. In reality, unless you die before you retire, there’s not going to be a lot to bequeath. Retirees under the Bush plan will be required to use the money in their accounts to buy the annuities that will then provide them with their post-retirement income. The only money left to pass to heirs is whatever is left over — if anything — from purchasing the annuities. As Business Week puts it, “The problem isn’t the restrictions on ownership in the Bush plan. It’s the false billing, which is aimed at drumming up support from a skeptical public.”

In his speech in Detroit, President Bush said, “Thirteen years from now, in 2018, the Social Security system will be paying out more than it takes in.” He continues to use this year as the date the problem begins. However, in 14 of the past 47 years, including 1975 to 1983, Social Security paid out more in benefits than the government collected in payroll, with the gap reaching $10 billion in 1983. So the projected “crossover” point in 2018 is a meaningless milestone.

In his speech in Detroit, President Bush said that private accounts were “a chance to make a better deal for our younger workers.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office, younger workers would receive better benefits from Social Security as it exists now, even if nothing changes, than from private accounts. His plan is worse than that due to higher clawbacks.

In his speech in Detroit, President Bush said, “Social Security will go broke when some of our youngsters get ready to retire, and that’s a fact.”

FACT: In 2042, enough new money will be coming in to pay between 73-80 percent of promised benefits. Even with this reduction, new retirees will still receive more money, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than today’s beneficiaries.

In his speech in Detroit, President Bush said, “You know firsthand that economic isolationism would mean economic disaster.”

FACT: A World Trade Organization appeals panel in November, 2003 upheld an earlier ruling that Bush violated trade rules in March 2002 when he imposed three-year tariffs on imported steel of up to 30 percent.

In his speech in Detroit, President Bush said, “And for those youngsters who cannot afford a community college, or for those workers who cannot, we’re going to increase the size of Pell grants to help them afford a community college — and/or a college education.”

Actually, President Bush’s budget will increase the top Pell grant only by $100 next year. At the same time, he eliminated the Perkins loan program, a program that helped about 673,000 students from low- and middle-income homes afford a college education last year.