Democrats...Don't Puss Out

They could have forced it--either party would likely make a grab for more power if they wre in a position to do so.

What they have found--is that it is a bad idea.

I was amazed they tried it to begin with--but neither party is above a power grab. It was incredibly unpopular with Democrats, of course--but it was also pretty unpopular with mosr Republicans. It was all they had. Putting the GOP in their place...(no, never happen), but still, you want to imagine how rules would affect you if the roles were reversed.

Either party would have tried it, and both parties would have been shouted down by people who believed it to be unfair.

The Ethics Rules change was another power nuts move that they've thought better of...with some encouragement.

The power they have is unprecedented---and don't fool yourself into imagining the Dems wouldn't have tried the same thing.

Reid never manhandled anything.

Cyclo-- There are plenty of instances where the Dems have held press conferences telling why they won't help with SS. And plenty where they have been asked to be a part of the solution.

Do you deny it?

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Sure, go ahead and link me to the transcripts of the press conferences in which the Dems say they aren't willing to talk about SS reform at all.

What you will find if you try, however, is that they will say that they aren't willing to discuss privatization, but that if the Bush team would be willing to compromise and take that off the table, so will they compromise and discuss reform.

I eagerly await your links.

Cycloptichorn

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As I thought, no answer to the challenge whatsoever.

I really wish you'd give up the practice of writing flat-out lies, Lash. It's unbecoming for a 4.0 student, really.

Cycloptichorn

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People who suspect others of lying do so because they lie so often.

If you were a 4.0 student, you'd know that.

Bush Defends Social Security Overhaul
UPDATED - Thursday February 17, 2005 1:49pm

Washington (AP) - President Bush (website - news - bio) appealed to members of Congress to make suggestions of their own for changing Social Security on Thursday, and said they need not fear political retribution.

"It used to be in the past people would step up and say, `Well, here's an interesting idea,' " Bush said at a news conference at the White House. "Then they would take that idea and clobber the person politically." The president, who has repeatedly called for bipartisanship on the volatile issue, said he won't do that.

"What I'm saying to members of Congress is that, `We have a problem, come together and let's fix it, and bring your ideas forward, and I'm willing to discuss them with you,' " Bush said in remarks that were quickly rejected by Democratic lawmakers, who say the president's plan would cut benefits. They want him to produce a complete proposal before they do.

"He's not going to get us negotiating against ourselves," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.
(Or, some would call this...WORKING TOGETHER ON A SOLUTION TO AN IMPORTANT PROBLEM. )

The Fed chief acknowledged that the private accounts by themselves don't solve Social Security's long-term financial problems. Reid delivered his rejection at a news conference where Senate Democrats unveiled a Web site calculator designed to let workers compare their benefits under current law with what they calculated would be available under the president's plan.
(...)
Some Democrats on the House panel, who believe Bush is trying to scare the public on the Social Security issue, wondered aloud why Greenspan didn't use the word "crisis" to describe the situation.

"I have chosen not to use that word," Greenspan said. "I consider the problem a very serious one."

Bush conceded that nothing will happen "unless that Congress thinks there's a problem. ... Once the people say to Congress, `There's a problem, fix it,' then I have a duty to say to members of Congress, `Bring forth your ideas.' "

Bush added: "And I clarified a variety of ideas that people should be encouraged to bring forward, without political retribution."

Bush is leaving open the possibility of raising taxes on those who earn more than $90,000 a year to help bolster Social Security's finances. Under the current system, payroll taxes are paid only on the first $90,000 in wages.
---------
He asked them for help in creating a solution, and they refused. They're a useless bunch of refuseniks, who won't even offer their own ideas. Because they don't have any.

Ponderdous, those who affix themselves to such chaff.

Once again, you call me a liar--and are proven wrong.

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Bush Urges Congress to Discuss Soc. Sec.
UPDATED - Tuesday March 15, 2005 6:49pm

Washington (AP) - President Bush (website - news - bio) on Wednesday exhorted members of Congress to talk to their constituents about the Social Security recess during the coming holiday recess. Minority Democrats already were ready with a message, but not the one Bush wants.

Bush, who will spend time around the Easter holiday at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, told reporters at a news conference that he understands overhauling the venerable government retirement program is "a difficult issue."

The president urged member of the House and Senate to have a dialogue with people in their states and districts but also urged them not to dwell on "Band-Aid" solutions. Discussions should focus on a permanent fix for Social Security, he said.

Bush also claimed the administration is making progress in convincing Americans that nothing will change for retirees or those who are near retirement and that the system needs to be changed to help provide retirement security for younger Americas.

Even before Bush urged lawmakers to talk to their constituents about this problem, Democrats planned a series of events across the country during the upcoming congressional recess to argue that his proposal for private investment accounts within Social Security would undermine the program's long-term financial stability.

Bush, acknowledging that his proposal faces some stiff opposition in Congress, said that all aspects of his plan are open to negotiation, as long as payroll taxes are not increased.

"All ideas are on the table," Bush had said in an interview published Wednesday in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He pledged to "work with members of Congress to help write a bill that can pass the Senate and House."

"I believe this issue is going to require consensus among the parties," Bush said. "Obviously, you can never write a bill where there's 100 percent agreement. But I do believe it's important for Democrats to come to the table. And I believe they will."

Senators unanimously agreed that strengthening Social Security was "a vital national priority" but they split along party lines on what to do about it in the first votes on Bush's proposal.

------------
You've had to have your head up your ass to avoid hearing Bush practically beg the Democrats to face Social Security. He has opened up the dialogue to everything but raising taxes. They keep harping negative about privatization.

Why don't they COME UP WITH ANYTHING. It doesn't have to include privatization. Just earn your pay!! Think of SOMETHING!!!

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You haven't proven your claim at all!

You said you've seen plenty of press conferences where the Dems flat-out said they wouldn't discuss SS at all. You haven't shown anything but TWO Bush releases.

Let's look at actual history:

Quote:

Cyclo-- There are plenty of instances where the Dems have held press conferences telling why they won't help with SS. And plenty where they have been asked to be a part of the solution.

Do you deny it?

Quote:

Sure, go ahead and link me to the transcripts of the press conferences in which the Dems say they aren't willing to talk about SS reform at all.

What you will find if you try, however, is that they will say that they aren't willing to discuss privatization, but that if the Bush team would be willing to compromise and take that off the table, so will they compromise and discuss reform.

I eagerly await your links.

And you haven't done that at all. What you've linked me to says nothing about that. The Dems have talked plenty about ways to fix SS, they just won't accept privatization. You don't know this, because either you are ignoring it, or you just haven't looked.

If you can't provide this

Quote:

instances where the Dems have held press conferences telling why they won't help with SS.

Then you are a flat-out liar who makes things up to support her case. Go ahead and attempt to prove me wrong, Lash.

Cycloptichorn

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The news conference was February 15. Schumer, Corzine, and Reed, among others were assembled to attack the logistics od SS reform, and the privatization issue.

During Schumer's approach to the podium, the group was asked if they would come to the bargaining table and work with the White House to formulate a workable Social Security plan. He laughed, as did Reed.

Schumer said, "And have them blame it on us later? I don't think so."

If you read the articles I posted, you would also see Reed has answered this again--

Reed's answer to why the Democrats refuse to help with Social Security plans--

"He's not going to get us negotiating against ourselves," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.
-
But, those of your ilk don't see or acknowledge anything that confronts their close-minded, herd approved mantra. Close your eyes before your head explodes!

They are using the privatization and personal accounts as their catch-phrases, but they have said they will not involve themselves in any aspect of changing SS. They have almost all been recorded as saying SS is in crisis, or deep trouble and must be addressed---back when Clinton was saying the same thing. Now, oddly, they've all changed their minds.

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Quote:

but they have said they will not involve themselves in any aspect of changing SS

Yet another blatant lie. You are inferring this from the things that you have posted, but I highly doubt you could find this quote. Highly doubt it.

The Democrats aren't the ones who have proposed working on SS this term. They are concerned with a lot more pressing needs, such as the fact that we are 400 Billion dollars in deficit last year and this year looks to be shaping up the same. I can give you any number of quotes from Democrats on this subject, if you like.

Bush and the Republicans are pushing for the reforms at this time, they should present a plan. The Democrats have said they will negotiate and work on a plan with the Republicans as long as it doesn't include carve-out privatization plans. It's not the minority party's job to put forward plans that the Majority wants to get done; believe it or not, they DO have their own agenda.

Unfortunately, the President doesn't want to budge on that point, because it is a key feature to his overall goal of dismantaling SS altogether. Fortunately, the people of America realize this, which is why after a 60-day, 60-stop tour, which cost the American taxpayers millions of dollars, the polls are farther down in support of the pres. than they were before they started the Bamblepalooza tour.

All this argument is going to be academic, as nothing is going to happen anyways; it must really kill you to watch your majority party get nothing done.... Do you have a link to what you posted, btw? Or are you making this up as well?

Cycloptichorn

ps: it's spelled 'Reid', not 'Reed'

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For spectators of the match who, during the intermission, may actually wonder if I am an opportunistic liar, or someone who will say anything to win an argument; I saw this news conference with Schumer and Reid, and what I described earlier in this thread happened as I said it did. I remember it so well because I was shocked at the candor of everyone on stage, saying they wouldn't touch it (Social Security), their laughter, and their given reason: because they'd share blame for it later.

Maybe you'll see it at 3AM on CSPAN some night.

Anyway, they have changed their tune since, but that is as it was in mid-February when I saw the press conference.

I am terribly belligerant most of the time, (warlike, quarrelsome, pugnacious... I shall not define it more, as it doesn't get any better...), I'm no practicioner of "small talk", and I have several other traits which one would likely not want carved in one's headstone.

Purposeful Liar is not among them.

I have almost the complete diametrically opposed view from almost everyone reading this, so some won't care whether or not I've been honest, they will simply score a debate.

Whatever is made of this will be fine. The only thing I wanted to do was clarify this point for anyone who was actually wondering.

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Just asking for some links is all,

which you apparently are not able of providing.

Cycloptichorn

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The asides by Schumer and response by Reid were not recorded in any of the articles I've found about that news conference.

Everything spoken, shockingly, does not find it's way into print on the web.

But, my part of this discussion has ceased to be for your benefit for a few posts.

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I sort of hesitated to post what I am about to post since it goes against how I orignally feel about the plan of which Bush is supposing but since this goes to the heart what lay behind this indexing on social security I feel it necessary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/politics/30pozen.html

April 30, 2005
A Democrat on Bush's Social Security Team
By EDUARDO PORTER

Quote:

The intellectual force behind President Bush's plan to overhaul Social Security, the man the president calls his favorite "Democrat economist," is not an economist. He is Robert C. Pozen, a lawyer and mutual fund executive who serves as chairman of MFS Investment Management in Boston.

A registered Democrat, Mr. Pozen donated money to the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry last year and voted for him on Nov. 2. He was a classmate of Hillary Rodham Clinton at Yale Law School.

But all that has not stopped President Bush from embracing Mr. Pozen's main idea to bring the nation's public pension regime into financial balance: a plan called "progressive indexing" because it would protect the lowest-wage workers from benefit reductions while progressively cutting benefits of higher-earning workers.

Mr. Pozen, who served on Mr. Bush's commission in 2001 that developed initial plans for carving private accounts out of Social Security, has been thrust into the spotlight by Mr. Bush's embrace of his proposal. But Mr. Pozen says his ideas on public pensions are free of politics.

"I consider myself a middle-of-the-road guy who tries to be carefully nonpartisan on this issue," he said. "I believe passionately in Social Security reform."

Opponents of the White House plan say that while Mr. Pozen's ideas may sound progressive, they are far from the Democratic mainstream. Mr. Pozen's proposals are "bad policy," said Senator Max Baucus, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, after the committee's hearings on Social Security this week.

The conservative side of the economics profession lauds progressive indexing. "It is a pretty fair way to approach the problem," said Michael Tanner, who heads the Project on Social Security Choice at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Mr. Tanner pointed to the political wisdom of pegging the plan to a Democratic thinker.

"It will be perceived by some as a benefit cut," he said, "and there is a certain amount of spreading the blame around for that."

To Democrats, however, Mr. Pozen is just providing the president with political cover.

Mr. Pozen "does not speak for the Democratic Party," said Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution, a liberal research institution. The president drafted Mr. Pozen onto his commission, Mr. Orszag said, only "because they were looking for Democrats that would restrict themselves to be in favor of private accounts."

Mr. Pozen's support for private accounts seems only natural given his long and successful career as a top-level executive in the fund management business.

After serving a stint as a lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Pozen joined Fidelity Investments, the financial powerhouse, in 1987. He left Fidelity 14 years later, substantially richer after rising to the position of vice chairman and after being in charge of the firm's big mutual fund group.

"It's fair to say I'm financially independent," Mr. Pozen said.

Since then, he has served on President Bush's commission, was secretary of economic affairs for Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a Republican, and taught at Harvard Law School. He took over as chairman of MFS in 2004 after it was battered by financial turmoil and scandal.

At the Senate Finance Committee hearing this week, Mr. Pozen said that while personal accounts were not essential to solving Social Security's financial woes, they were the "dessert" to be offered to American retirees after they had eaten the "spinach" of benefit cuts needed to plug a financial hole estimated by Social Security actuaries - in today's money - at nearly $4 trillion over 75 years.

Mr. Pozen has said that progressive indexing, which would not start until 2012 under his proposal, would close 70 percent of the estimated gap by substantially limiting benefits for higher-income retirees.

Under the current system, the benefits set at retirement are supposed to grow, on average, at the same pace as wages, so that the comparative living standards of retirees, while generally lower than working Americans, do not erode below today's levels.

Mr. Pozen's plan would maintain that schedule only for the bottom 30 percent of the work force - those with average annual earnings up to $25,000.

At the top, those earning more than the taxable limit - expected to be about $113,000 in 2012 when the plan would start, would have future benefits uncoupled from wages and linked instead to inflation, which tends to grow at a pace about 1.1 percentage points slower than wages. In the middle, benefits would be indexed by a mix of prices and wages.

This re-indexing would substantially reduce benefit growth at the top. Today, for example, an American whose earnings are in line with the maximum income taxed by Social Security, currently $90,000, can expect to receive as much as 42 percent of that amount upon retirement. Mr. Pozen's proposal would steadily reduce that to 22 percent by 2061.

Mr. Pozen argued that personal accounts could be layered on top of this plan, eventually providing additional income. But even as the Bush administration has embraced Mr. Pozen's proposal for progressive indexing, it has steered clear of adopting his plan to raise taxes as part of a Social Security overhaul.

Mr. Pozen has been recommending adding private accounts to Social Security since the mid-1990's, which may have been what brought him to the attention of the Bush White House.

"I'm not sure how I got invited to be a member" of the 2001 commission, Mr. Pozen said, "but I had worked on various Social Security projects over the years."

But now he worries that any plan to overhaul Social Security will fail unless it includes both benefit cuts and tax increases.

"As you know," Mr. Pozen said, "both sides have got to win."

I remember Clinton suggested much of these ideas, maybe this is where he got them.

I also think that this whole re-indexing which does save lower income people way later down the line is just a smoke screen for Bush to get his private accounts passed now of which he wants which will not do anything by themselves to save social security.

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I'm not against Private Accounts as an 'extra' addition, but if it comes out of current taxes, then the federal deficiet would become so large that any gains we see from Private Accounts would be eaten up in higher taxes in the future which will be needed to pay off our HUGE debt.

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Lash wrote:

The asides by Schumer and response by Reid were not recorded in any of the articles I've found about that news conference.

Everything spoken, shockingly, does not find it's way into print on the web.

But, my part of this discussion has ceased to be for your benefit for a few posts.

This has to be one of the lamest excuses I have ever seen.

How did you know about these remarks if they are nowhere to be found in print? Did you personally attend the news conference?

As for your claim that only liars think other people lie. Completely silly in its basis. Someone with a better grasp of the facts would be able to tell when someone is lying about those facts.

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Quote:

The asides by Schumer and response by Reid were not recorded in any of the articles I've found about that news conference.

Everything spoken, shockingly, does not find it's way into print on the web.

But, my part of this discussion has ceased to be for your benefit for a few posts.

As I thought.

You come into my thread and say:

Quote:

Cyclo-- There are plenty of instances where the Dems have held press conferences telling why they won't help with SS.

Which is a lie. A lie. You made this up. I don't know why, other than the fact that it makes Democrats look like obstructionists and it's easy for you to demonize them that way. Relying on some 'off the cuff' comments, with no record of them at all, is ridiculous; as you not only said that such comments were made, but that

Quote:

There are plenty of instances

There isn't even ONE, let alone PLENTY, of instances. I think you have actually started to believe the crap that you read on your Winger sites every day. Let me warn you, in case you decide to not check up on their research and get embarassed by it again; they lie as easily as they breathe.

Why don't you just admit that you made it up, that you don't have any actual sources for this claim, and move on? You've already been tested and found wanting.

Cycloptichorn

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parados--

I have this rectangular thing in my house with moving pictures. I saw this press conference.

I have also quoted Reid a couple of times now saying why the Democrats won't help the WH with SS.

Believe it or not.

Don't give a ****.

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Boy I wish I could pull that off as good, but I know I never could. I have a hard enough time backed with tons of links.

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Lash wrote:

parados--

I have this rectangular thing in my house with moving pictures. I saw this press conference.

I have also quoted Reid a couple of times now saying why the Democrats won't help the WH with SS.

Believe it or not.

Don't give a ****.

If I'm ever in a bar fight I want someone with balls like Lashs' on my side. You're a real man. :wink:

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Women don't give a **** as often as men don't.

And, we don't give a **** in heels.

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Lash wrote:

parados--

I have this rectangular thing in my house with moving pictures. I saw this press conference.

I have also quoted Reid a couple of times now saying why the Democrats won't help the WH with SS.

Believe it or not.

Don't give a ****.

That rectangular thing with pictures does printed things called transcripts. They can be found for every program. LexusNexus always has them. Same thing with radio. For a few dollars you can purchase tapes too.

I could check it if you bothered to give more information like date, TV network etc.

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Democrats...Don't Puss Out

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