JamesMorrison wrote:Hopefully, this is not meant as a rebuttal to my referral to President Bush having a SS plan and an attempt to validate your assertion that the President had absolutely no plan. Even had you added the qualifying phrase that Shiller was careful to use: "an entire plan to restore solvency", such efforts fall short of that end. The existence of a partial plan does not negate the very plan it strives towards. Further, in your excision of the Shiller paper we find he uses the word "plan" no less than three times. Additionally, in the very first sentence we see Schiller recognizing that President Bush outlined "a specific plan for personal accounts within Social Security".
If you think that bits and pieces of a plan amount to a plan, then I have bits and pieces of a structure that amount to the Brooklyn Bridge I'd like to sell you.
JamesMorrison wrote:To flatly state: "I repeat: there was no Bush "plan" for social security reform." is simply disingenuous. That the President did not have a complete plan is valid and noteworthy but any such plan or proposal must endure a synthesis informed by the Treasury dept, various government agencies, and popular opinion.
That, I respectfully submit, is utter nonsense. The president is quite capable of submitting a plan all by himself, just as the White House is quite capable, every year, of submitting a budget to congress. Just because the plan faces inevitable changes once it is submitted doesn't mean that it isn't a plan until it undergoes those changes.
Bush himself admitted that, whatever it was that he was proposing, it would have no effect on the solvency of social security.
