Indulge me.

[kellinator]

For those of you who are planning to vote for Bush in November, would you please tell me why? Preferably a reason a little more nuanced than "Kerry's an asshole"?

Note: You're not going to change my mind on this. If the past four years haven't changed my mind, a fifty-word comment sure as hell isn't going to do it.

I'm just trying to understand. Right now nothing scares me more than the thought of four more years of Bush, but I know there are people I like and respect who disagree for whatever reason, and I want to know why, so I can at least try to understand.

No flaming. If I'm too slammed to post my DragonCon pictures (coming soon!), I'm sure as hell too busy to play referee. Play nice, folks.

Comments

[winterbadger]

2) Kerry is way scarier than Bush on fiscal policy. His disclaimer that everything is "just fine" with Social Security, for example. (Me, I figure a republican congress and a democratic whitehouse will help rein in most of the excesses. But he still gives me the heeby-geebies on this, and it is almost enough to vote AGAINST him.)

Kerry doesn't say that "everything is just fine"; he acknowledges that the retirement of the Baby Boom generation is going to strees the *current* system, and his economic plans include reform and changes that will stabilize social security. What he *opposes* is Bush's plan to cut benefits by 45%, tax them, and expose them to the vagaries of the financial markets.

And for what it's worth, Kerry (being hyper-liberal) ...
Hy0per-liberal? Kerry? Uh, the hyper-liberal candidates in the primaries didn't most of them get past 10%. Dean was much more liberal than Kerry (I'm still trying to decide whether it was a good or a bad thing that he didn't get the nomination). But Kerry, hyper-liberal? Only in the Karl Rove playbook.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

OK.. Here's the link to Kerry's site:

http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/health_care/medicare.html

"As president, John Kerry will not raise Social Security taxes, raise the retirement age, cut benefits for people that rely on Social Security, or privatize Social Security. He will consider making sure that high-income beneficiaries don't get more out than they pay in."

The only weasel option I see in there is to either delay the changes until after he is president, or to reduce benefits for "people who don't rely on Social Security" and are "high-income beneficiaries" (i.e. the very wealthy).

On that very page, he claims that growing the economy will help stabilize the system, but if it increases the wages of lower income people, it will also increase the obligations under the current system. If it increases the wages of the wealthy, it won't do anything to support the current system.

Alternately, he will have to propose putting general revenues into Social Security (from higher taxes on the wealthy) to fund it.

There is no proposal here to fix the problem. You have to either increase revenue (by privitization or increased taxes) or reduce benefits (by reducing payments or increasing the retirement age.) The sooner specific changes are announced, the sooner people can plan for them, and, in the case of tax increases, the sooner the system moves towards solvency.

So what's his reform of the system? I don't see Kerry as having the balls to actually touch the third rail of politics. We'll be trading one gutless wonder for another.

(And Bush isn't doing much better on Social Security, as I don't see how we're going to finance a privitazation effort. And otherwise, as I pointed out in my followup to myself, Bush has been a fiscal disaster.)

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

i have heard that social security is not as "in danger" as we think it is--that if the trust fund hadn't been raided so many times to fudge the budget in other areas, it'd be totally solvent now. seems to me somebody could, in theory, put that money back into the fund and the crisis would be averted. but i'm just guessing, because i don't know if that's even legal.

also, i have serious issues with the way certain social programs have been "reformed" already. there are an awful lot of female-heads-of-household out there who are now in poverty and doomed to stay 'less they get real lucky because a bunch o' wiseacres thought that if you got off the welfare rolls, regardless of how you got off, you'd automatically be self-sufficient and wouldn't need the government's help anymore. kinda makes rush limbaugh's accusation that liberals judge how much welfare helps by how many people are on the rolls look a little quaint.

[winterbadger]

i have heard that social security is not as "in danger" as we think it is--that if the trust fund hadn't been raided so many times to fudge the budget in other areas, it'd be totally solvent now. seems to me somebody could, in theory, put that money back into the fund and the crisis would be averted. but i'm just guessing, because i don't know if that's even legal.

Well, there *isn't* any "trust fund" which is one of the dirty not-so-secrets of domestic policy (along with "there is no 'welfare' program that just pays you for being poor"). Taxes are assessed for SSI, then they go into the general fund; that, along with all sorts of other federal income not specifically and irrevocably (like anything is irrevocable in legislation) earmarked for some specfific purpose, is used to pay all the government's bills.

The "trust fund" is a theoretical construct, kind of like Adam Smith's invisible hand or Schrodinger's Cat :-) If the amount of income from SSI tax is more than what is spent on SSI, the Treasury Department makes up special issue bonds for the difference out of thin air and puts them in an accounting column makred "SS trust fund" and then spends the actual money on whatever Congress authorizes spending on. The money doesn't get saved in a bank account, just bonds that (hopefully) whoever is in government when they mature will find some way to pay.

[winterbadger]

The only weasel option I see in there is to either delay the changes until after he is president, or to reduce benefits for "people who don't rely on Social Security" and are "high-income beneficiaries" (i.e. the very wealthy).

Well, there's also the option of finding other funds in general revenue that can support SSI. After all, SSI has been funding the rest of the budget for decades; it's time for ag subsidies to multinational ag companies to give a bit back, maybe. Fiscal discipline is one of the ways Kerry suggests that SSI can be continued at more than the 73% that the system can afford to pay starting in 2042 when the crunch hits.

And I don't really see anything wrong with means-testing either SSI or Medicare. Those programs are there to make sure that the poorest in our society don't lack basic healthcare or other needs and can be independent in their old age. I really don't see why Donald Trump should be getting checks from the SSA when he retires if he's still got millions (or billions) in the bank.