Daily Howler - April 30, 2005

WHO ON FLAT EARTH WAS THE EDITOR! George Bush lied in the face of the young. And the Washington Post typed it up:

SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2005

LIAR’S FIGURES: Yes, we’ve reached the point where he’s flat-out lying. Yesterday, George Bush conducted a privatization pep rally among the marks of Fairfax, Virginia. People were there who trusted their president. And their president lied in their faces:

BUSH (4/29/05): In 2027, the obligations of the federal government to retirees will be $200 billion greater than the payroll tax receipts. Starting in 2017, the system goes into the red, and it gets worse every year—2027, $200 billion; about 2030-something, it's $300 billion; and eventually, 2041, it's broke...

And if you're a younger worker and you start paying into the payroll system today and 2041 is about the time you start retiring, I'm telling you, the system's going to be bankrupt unless we do something about it.

In other words, you've been working all your life. You're putting money in, and by the time it comes for you to get ready to retire, there's nothing there.

Astonishing. As Bush knows, there most certainly will not be “nothing there” when workers retire in 2041. Indeed, according to the CBO estimate from which Bush is working, the SS system will be able to pay 74 percent of current promised benefits in that year. (Adjusted for inflation, that 74 percent pay-out will be larger than the benefit paid out today.) Yes, the system’s reserves will be exhausted by that year, but payroll taxes will still be rolling in. “By the time it comes for you to get ready to retire, there's nothing there?” Bush’s inexcusable “bankruptcy” language has always been baldly misleading. But yesterday, Bush moved well beyond a line. He flatly lied in the face of the people who came out to see their president speak.