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"Debt, n. An ingenious substitute
for the chain and whip of the slave-driver."
- Ambrose Bierce

After weeks of refusing to disclose details, President
George W. Bush finally explained his plan to privatize Social Security the other day.

"Because the - all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers," Bush said Feb. 4 in Tampa. "For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those - changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be - or closer delivered to what has been promised."

Well, after a brilliant analysis like that, who could possibly doubt that they'd want to place their hopes for retirement security in Bush's steady hands? Seriously, folks, confidence in Bush's Social Security scheme to divert Social Security contributions into Wall Street fees wasn't high to begin with.

And it wasn't enhanced by the revelation that his administration's cost estimates on its prescription drug benefit for Medicare were off by a mere third of a trillion dollars (i.e., $400 billion vs. $724 billion).

Bush actually let the screeching, clawing cat out of the bag last week when he revealed that the famous Social Security "trust fund" he had always pledged not to touch has long since been looted by his massive tax cuts to the rich.

"Some in our country think that Social Security is a
trust fund - in other words, there's a pile of money
being accumulated," Bush said. "That's just simply not true. The money - payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They're spent on benefits, and they're spent on government programs. There is no trust. We're on the ultimate pay-as-you-go system -what goes in comes out.

And so, starting in 2018, what's going in - what's coming out is greater than what's going in." By the way, just a reminder that I was writing about the fictional Social Security "trust fund" years ago, even while Bush and Gore were peddling their nonsense about "Social Security trust fund lock boxes."
 
"I was absolutely shocked at what Bush said about the Social Security trust fund," economist Allen Smith remarked. "President Bush has finally acknowledged what I have been saying throughout his entire presidency. The $1.6 trillion of Social Security surplus money that is supposed to be in the trust fund waiting for the retirement of the baby boomers has all been spent on other government programs and replaced with worthless non-marketable government IOUs."

Smith, the author of 'The Looting of Social Security: How The Government Is Draining America's Retirement Account,' said he has been waging an uphill battle to alert the public to the fact that Bush and his predecessors have been spending Social Security money as if it were general fund revenue, in violation of federal law.

Smith also accuses Bush of continuing to illegally spend approximately $400 million of Social Security money each day.

Newsweek's Allan Sloan noted that switching to private investment accounts would require massive borrowing by the federal government, adding to the already gigantic deficits.

"Under the current system, your Social Security taxes go to pay Ma and Pa and Grandma and Grandpa," Sloan wrote. "If your money is going into a private account instead, how will Uncle Sam pay Ma and Pa? The same way Bush has paid for everything, be it tax cuts, wars or his Medicare prescription-drug benefit: borrowing."

And that would mean borrowing some $4.5 trillion over the first 20 years of Social Security privatization - from a bank that Bush has pushed near the breaking point already.

"My father lost a major part of his investments in mutual funds in the 1970s, and watched his investments in mutual funds in the 1990s dwindle before he was forced to jump that sinking ship again," wrote Judy Brown in the New York Times.

"One set of grandparents also lost their investments in the stock market crash of 1929, and my other grandfather lost a thriving business to the Depression. Each time there was a stock market 'adjustment,' these small investors lost security for their senior years, but Social Security neither dwindled nor disappeared.

"Now I face my retirement years, with President Bush willing to gamble that part of my security away despite the history of regular downturns in the stock market," Brown said.

Bush, the most fiscally irresponsible president in modern American history, actually dared to propose a budget that doesn't include the cost of his Iraq invasion or his Social Security boondoggle.

That's right. Although it gives more funds to the Pentagon, Bush's budget contains no money to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which average about $5 billion a month. The White House says that's because the war costs can't be known ahead of time.

That makes sense. I don't know what my heating bill will be for February, so the best thing for me to do would be to assume it will cost nothing and not budget for it,

Maybe we'll all wake up tomorrow and suddenly find that the cost of the Iraq invasion is nothing. Maybe magical elves will have taken over all U.S. responsibilities there. That's so likely, it seems, that zero is in fact the figure Bush counts for war expenses.

In his budget, Bush disingenuously proposed cuts he knows Congress will certainly reject.

Bush proposed slashing farm subsidies, for example, a mere two and a half years after he signed a 10-year, $190 billion farm bill designed to expand those very benefits.

"This bill is generous and will provide a safety net for farmers," Bush said as he inked the document in April 2002.

 "It's true that by some standards this is the tightest budget that Bush has submitted. But that's not much of a standard," said David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Foundation. "They spend like drunken sailors for four years, and then say, 'We're only going to spend a little more this year'."

The Fox-fed lie that Bush is "tightening the budget belt" is ludicrous. Look at the facts. In fiscal year 2003, the deficit was a record $378 billion. Last year it hit $412 billion. This year it will soar to at least $427 billion. Add that to the national debt which, as of Friday afternoon, stood at
$7,629,334,023,890.

"So in three years' time under President Bush and a
Republican Congress, we've added $1.4 trillion to our nation's debt, largely because government revenues were reduced through tax cuts benefiting the rich," noted Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

And remember, that's not even counting the costs of the Iraq invasion and the Social Insecurity privatization scheme.

By the way, don't fall for any of that nonsense about Bush's "private account" money being passed on to heirs. According to the New York Times, most lower-income workers would be required to purchase government lifetime annuities which provide a guaranteed monthly payment for life, but expire at death. Money in those annuities cannot be passed on to children.

"For all its talk of deficit reduction, President Bush's 2006 budget is a map of reckless economic policies and shows how they have backed the United States into a precarious position in the global financial markets," the New York Times noted in an editorial Monday.

"It's not hard to see what brought the United States to this juncture. Mr. Bush's first-term tax cuts were too expensive and too skewed toward top earners to work as effective, self-correcting economic stimulus.

Instead, predictably, they've driven the nation deep into the red. Having reduced tax revenue to a share of the economy not seen since 1959, the cuts are a huge factor in the swing from a budget surplus to a $412 billion deficit."

Obviously, Bush likes his ink just as red as his states.