Sten Gazette

In his “Town Hall Meeting” on Social Security Reform last Tuesday, President Bush lied through his teeth. There’s really no other way to put it.

He said: “As a matter of fact, by the time today’s workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt. So if you’re 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you’re beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now. And that’s what we’re here to talk about, a system that will be bankrupt.”

As a matter of fact, Mr. President? Last time we checked, a fact is something that is true. IF the lines on the chart meet on schedule in 2052, the Trust Fund will have been exhausted, but the system will still have its income from current workers, even if it is not enough to maintain the same level of benefits. But that’s still FAR from bankruptcy! How many of us have expenses that exceed our incomes from time to time? That’s not bankruptcy! Or if it is, the US Government is bankrupt now.

And he said: “This is part of what — this is part of fulfilling a campaign pledge. I wouldn’t be sitting here if the people said, we don’t want anybody to touch it; we think it’s okay.”

There’s that mandate again, eh?

And this one just cracks us up: “Most younger people in America think they’ll never see a dime.”

It might have been a little more believable if he had started with “my people tell me,” or “Karl says,” or some other attribution of this obvious untruth. But no, he stated it as a fact.

Well, if “most younger people” believe that, it can only be because you and your rich corpororate friends TOLD them that. Reminds us of the WMD thing in another vetted, sanitized, and scripted “town hall” meeting during the campaign last summer. At that point he wasn’t quite admitting that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but he was starting to weasel a bit, and was still justifying the invasion on the fact that “I thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Congress thought there were weapons. Even the UN thought there were weapons in Iraq.”

Sorry, Mr. President. You thought there were WMDs in Iraq because your intelligence people were telling you what you wanted to hear. Congress thought so because you told them there were. The UN thought so because your Secretary of State Colin Powell told them there were.

And another thing. If the President has the facts right, and has control of both houses of Congress, why are “several GOP groups close to the White House asking the same donors who helped reelect Bush to fund an extensive campaign to convince Americans — and skeptical lawmakers — that Social Security is in crisis and that private accounts are the only cure,” as reported in the Washigton Post? The article goes on to say “White House officials, led by Karl Rove and Charles P. Blahous III, the president’s policy point man on Social Security, are helping to shape the public relations campaign” which could cost $100 million.

What a coincidence– these same contributors are fronting the $40 million cost of Bush’s shameless and vulgar inauguration festivities, while the nation is at war.

–SG

P.S. We don’t make up quotes. You’ll find a complete transcript of the President’s Social Security talk on the White House web site.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2005 at 1:53 am and is filed under Issues, Social Security, Propaganda, The President, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.