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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Time to Leave the Table

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, May 3, 2005; Page A21

There is a name for those who continue to sit at a gambling table even 
after they learn that the game is fixed. They are called fools.

Now that President Bush has proposed Social Security benefit cuts through 
"progressive indexing," his critics are said to have an obligation to 
negotiate in good faith to achieve a solution. There are just two problems 
with that sentence: The words "good faith" and "solution."
        
Bush's "plan" is still not a plan, just a few ideas. If the president is 
serious, let him first persuade members of his own party to agree to a 
detailed proposal so everyone knows what the trade-offs are. If what he has 
in mind is a good idea, Republicans will be eager to sign on. And if Bush 
can't get Republicans to go along, might that say something about the 
merits of his suggestions?

Opponents of Bush's cut-and-privatize project -- they include not only 
Democrats but also skeptical Republicans -- do have a responsibility. Their 
task is to subject half-baked concepts to the criticism they deserve and 
insist that they be fully baked before serious discussions can begin. 
Social Security, the most successful government program in our history, 
should not be overturned lightly.

That the president is fixing the Social Security reform game should be 
obvious. The most basic corruption of the process is the way the Republican 
congressional leadership has transformed the bargaining that once took 
place between the House and the Senate.

In the old days, when each house produced different versions of the same 
bill, a "conference" committee typically including members of both parties 
from both houses would thrash out the details and reach a compromise. Now 
the Republicans will concede whatever is necessary to get a bill out of the 
Senate, even as the lockstep-Republican House produces a right-wing version 
of the same proposal. In conferences, Republicans routinely freeze out all 
but the most pliable Democrats. The supposed "compromise" that emerges is 
not a compromise at all. Democrats who go along become enablers of a game 
being played with a stacked deck.

The game is also fixed because the president has narrowed the range of 
Social Security options to protect his most questionable policy choices.

Some press reports have suggested that Bush's willingness to cut Social 
Security benefits for the wealthy turned him into some latter-day Karl 
Marx, or at least Ted Kennedy.

This is nonsense.

Bush has refused to put his own tax cuts on the table as part of a Social 
Security fix. Repealing Bush's tax cuts for those earning more than 
$350,000 a year could cover all or most of the 75-year Social Security 
shortfall. Keeping part of the estate tax in place could cover a quarter to 
half of the shortfall. Some of the hole could be filled in by a modest 
surtax on dividends or capital gains.

But Bush is resolute about protecting the interests of the truly rich by 
making sure that any taxes on wealth are ruled out of the game from the 
beginning. The Social Security cuts he is proposing for the wealthy are a 
pittance compared with the benefits they get from his tax cuts. The 
president is keeping his eye on what really matters to him.

The real costs of progressive indexing as currently conceived would be paid 
by middle-income earners -- those with incomes in the range of $35,000 to 
$60,000 a year.

Eventually, such earners would face benefit cuts of 20 to 30 percent from 
what they are promised under the current program. And it gets worse: Rising 
Medicare premiums are eating up an increasing share of middle-class Social 
Security checks. Even without the cuts, Social Security payments will, over 
time, barely cover an individual's Medicare costs.

Last, there are the trillions of dollars that Bush would have us borrow to 
cover the transition to the private accounts he wants to set up. It's far 
from clear that cutting future Social Security benefits for younger members 
of the middle class and saddling them with mounds of new indebtedness would 
make either them or the country better off. Anyone who is truly 
conservative might have a question or two about whether this "solution" is 
worse than the problem it is purportedly addressing.

Walking away from a rigged game is hard for some people, especially when 
those running it and the respected opinion-makers who support them insist 
that this time the game will truly be on the level. But, especially when 
the danger involves gambling away the future of Social Security, the truly 
responsible thing is to leave the table.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050201259.html