Social insecurity

President Bush used his State of the Union address Wednesday to launch a determined push for sweeping changes in the nation's Social Security system, including new individual investment accounts for younger workers and potentially deep but unspecified cuts in benefits for future retirees.

In his first full-scale exposition of the issue he has made the top domestic priority of his second term, Bush argued that Social Security, the 70-year-old pension system that long had been the federal government's most popular program, was in declining financial health and needed to be changed.

[...]

Republican supporters of Bush's plan jumped repeatedly to their feet and cheered. Democrats sat and scowled; twice, some protested "No!" when the president claimed that Social Security could go bankrupt, an assertion many experts consider exaggerated.

And several moderate Republicans who have been on the fence and worried about the political risks Bush was asking them to assume, including Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), chose not to clap when Bush talked about his Social Security plans.
  LA Times article

Her career will soon be seen careening down a rabbit hole.

Bush added new details to his proposal for individual accounts, under which workers could direct some of the taxes now paid for Social Security to mutual funds investing in stocks and bonds.

In a significant shift in his rationale for the accounts, Bush dropped his claim that they would help solve Social Security's fiscal problems — a link he sometimes made during last year's presidential campaign. Instead, he said the individual accounts were desirable because they would be "a better deal," providing workers what he said would be a higher rate of return and "greater security in retirement."

A Bush aide, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, was more explicit, saying that the individual accounts would do nothing to solve the system's long-term financial problems.

That candid analysis, although widely shared by economists, distressed some Republicans.

"Oh, my God," one GOP political strategist said when he learned of the shift in rhetoric. "The White House has made a lot of Republicans walk the plank on this. Now it sounds as if they are sawing off the board."

NOW you nutjobs are catching on to what you've got at the helm. Too late, though. Argh, argh, argh.

Still, I must ask: If Bush is no longer claiming that the "personal" accounts will help solve SS's fiscal problems, what is he claiming will? Apparently, I haven't been following this particular goose chase closely enough.