As we noted a bit earlier this evening (or, I guess, this morning — whatever), we very much doubt Reps. Thomas and McCrery are really as open as they seem to want Democrats to believe to leaving Social Security and its funding base intact and finding their money for private accounts from some other source.
But I was just chatting with TPM reader JK. And as he notes, if you take what the Ways and Means Republicans are saying at face value, it’s really something to behold.
Under the new Ownership Society, apparently, Republicans are so dead-set on letting people control their own money that they’re going to go out on to the international capital markets and borrow a few trillion dollars so they can give it out to people so they can put it into the stock market. Of course, if individuals are more inclined toward conservative investment strategies they can purchase bonds and thus lend back to the Treasury the money the Treasury just borrowed so they could put it in stocks.
Of course, perhaps we’re assuming too much. Perhaps they aren’t planning to borrow the money but rather come up with some big new tax that will generate funds that they can then give back to people to invest in the stock market.
