The apocalypse will be here anytime now!
Just another sign that the end of days are upon us! President Bush solicited foreign policy advice from former President Bill Clinton at CIA briefings this week and even told Mr. Clinton that he liked his approach to reforming Social Security. 'It was really a lot of fun, Mr. Bush told reporters yesterday after spending three days with Mr. Clinton and former President George Bush in Rome. ' These CIA briefings a lot of time prompt policy discussions,' he added. 'It's interesting to get their points of view about their experiences in particular countries.' ***snippet*** The president also praised one of Mr. Clinton's domestic policies -- trying to reform Social Security. Both men have proposed personal savings accounts as part of the solution, an idea that is vociferously opposed by congressional Democrats. 'I was telling President Clinton I remember watching one of his town hall meetings in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on this very subject,' Mr. Bush said just hours after bidding farewell to his predecessor at the Rome airport. 'And I thought it was a very impressive presentation,' he added. 'By the way, a lot of the language happens to be pretty close to some of the town hall meetings we've had.' If you listen very carefully now, you can hear the sounds of Bush and Clinton haters' heads exploding!
posted by The Sandmonkey @ 4/16/2005 03:44:00 AM
2 Comments:
Unfortunately, praktike is right. Such personal accounts would be the best thing since sliced bread, but politics is against them.
Clinton didn't actually propose personal accounts, but rather privitization in the sense of investing the Social Security trust fund in securities, which is a bad idea. He also proposed, as a part of this, taking the then-current surplus and putting it in the SS trust fund for such investment.
Clinton did, however, clearly state that Social Security was in crisis. Politics being what they are, the Republicans pooh-poohed such a suggestion, in 1998. Now the Democrats are doing the same with Bush. it is criminal that such an important issue comes down to the politics of hate.
When Clinton made his proposal, he did tour the country to rally support.
btw, if Roosevelt were alive today, my bet is that he would say that the Bush plan doesn't go far enough. In fact, my bet is that if FDR had been able to foresee the demographic problems that Social Security faces, he would have based it on private accounts to begin with. in fact, his poriginal proposal had a provision for voluntary private accounts in addition to his "madatory annuity" protion, which is substantially what we have now as Social Security retirement. Congress removed the voluntary private accounts.
Sorry for the boring American politics.
This is very informative. I hope to see more in the near future
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