Reply #15: Democrats should start demanding that the very first thing to be done [View All]

[snippy]

about Social Security must be preventing Bush and the republican Congress from continuing to spend the Social Security annual surplus. It should be invested by the Social Security administration in a single trust fund account which holds broad stock index funds and a broad selection of government and corporate bonds. This would immediately improve the solvency of the trust fund and reveal the true annual deficits that Bush and the republican Congress are advocating in their budgets.

The republicans would howl with outrage and their only defense would be that every president and Congress has done it. But the democrats can easily argue that Bush's incessant complaints about the upcoming insolvency of the trust fund show that everyone should be able to agree that it finally is time to stop this practice. This would turn Bush's argument for privateering Social Security against him. He and other republicans would shit their pants.

Democrats also need to stand firm that Social Security retain its defined benefit plan status to truly continue as a retirement insurance plan. Only some form of a defined benefit plan can provide an adequate minimum guaranteed amount to all retirees.

Some combination of increased revenue and decreased outlays together with some type of "add on" accounts may have to be agreed to in the future, but for now democrats should limit themselves to talking about stopping Bush from continuing to loot the trust fund and about maintaining Social Security as a defined benefit plan with a minimum guaranteed benefit.