Are they really that stupid <$NoAd$> or they getting paid? Headline on an AP story running at CBSNews.com: “Bush Smiles At The Little Guy.”
The article begins …
President Bush put a populist face on his Social Security plan by urging Congress to tilt the system to benefit low-income retirees of the future as part of a plan to shore up the program’s finances.
At a prime-time news conference Thursday night, Mr. Bush said he envisioned a plan under which all future retirees could “count on a benefit equal to or higher than today’s seniors,” a formula that left open the possibility that guaranteed benefits for middle and upper income seniors could be cut in later years to bring Social Security’s finances into balance.
So that’s smiling on the little guy, a plan that promises huge benefits cuts for everyone in the middle class. And that formula? Apparently the author of the piece doesn’t get that the president meant a benefit equal to or higher in straight numerical terms. Freezing benefits in today’s dollars amounts to huge benefit cuts in itself. How would you like to be making what people made for doing your job in 1960?
Late Update: A couple readers have written in to say that what the president was referring to was so-called ‘progressive indexing’ and that this does not call for freezing benefits at their current nominal dollar levels. True. But what I’m pointing to is where the president is setting what you might call his line of guarantee — the line he’s saying no one will fall below. And, as I note above, where he’s setting that line already amounts to a massive cut in benefits that only grows with time.
