Thursday, February 03, 2005

Younguns Beware - Dubya and Social Security

This from the Washington Post this morning.

From what Dubya said last night in the State of the Union, I've just barely slip-slided into that age bracket which will not be affected by his grand, shaky plans for an overhaul of Social Security. But, you younguns had better be aware and very, very interested in what Dubya believes should be done with Social Security.

Dan Balz writes in the Post that:

For younger Americans, who Bush knows are more receptive to his plan, he emphasized both sweeteners and reassurance. Personal accounts, he said, could provide a larger retirement nest egg than the existing system. But he was quick to add that there would be protections to minimize risk. Bush will face more questions from younger workers as they learn how complicated the accounts may be and that they face a reduction in promised benefits because of the president's plan.

Bush also tried to provide a cushion against criticism that his plan would require the government to borrow as much as $2 trillion over the next 10 years to cover the transition to a new system, detailing plans to phase in the personal accounts slowly, starting in 2009, with an estimated transition cost of $700 billion to $800 billion.


The president and his advisers were far more willing to offer specifics about the personal savings accounts than they were about the steps required to keep the system solvent. Those omissions, administration officials say, were deliberate to give congressional leaders more maneuvering room to find a consensus later this year. But that stance still leaves the administration open to Democratic criticism that it is avoiding the toughest questions about the plan, and reaction last night was uniformly negative among Democratic lawmakers.



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