1115.org

“These pieces of paper are as worthless as my soul.”

A while back, we discussed the importance of the Social Security trust fund and why defaulting on it would be a very bad idea. If you haven’t read it already, take a minute to learn why default would rank very high on the list of Bush administration atrocities.

Though just about everyone in this country knows that the President’s version of Social Security privatization is dead (at least for now,) he is still going through the motions in the second half of a 60-day campaign to muddy the waters and pressure some Congressmen to lend him support. To date, the tour has been just like the 2004 campaign: Crisscrossing the country on the public’s dime, throwing out inflammatory statements (bankrupt, flat bust,) and barring anyone who doesn’t agree with the party line from even being in the same building. Seems they have come to the conclusion that if you have a defective product, it’s easier to trick people into buying than going back to the drawing board.

On Tuesday, the President’s Bamboozlepalooza (™ TPM) tour visited the Office of Public Debt Accounting in Parkersburg, WV for a visit with the physical representation of 22 years of overpaid Social Security taxes. With nearly any other President, this photo op would have been designed to thank American workers for their acceptance of a tax increase that allowed an important program to survive challenging demographic conditions. But George W. Bush isn’t any other President, so the appearance was an opportunity to perform a little magic show: the $1.7 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds don’t really exist:

“A lot of people in America think there is a trust — that we take your money in payroll taxes and then we hold it for you and then when you retire, we give it back to you,” Bush said in a speech at the University of West Virginia at Parkersburg. “But that’s not the way it works,” Bush said. “There is no trust ‘fund’ — just IOUs that I saw firsthand,” Bush said.

Earlier, Susan Chapman of the Office of Public Debt Accounting had shown Bush an ivory four-drawer filing cabinet with numeric locks. “This is it,” she said.

“This is what exists,” Bush said, illustrating his point that the promise of future Social Security benefits are simply stashed in a file.

“Imagine,” Bush said in his speech. “The retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet. It’s time to strengthen and modernize Social Security for future generations with growing assets that you can control that you call your own — assets that the government can’t take away.”

The irony, of course, is that Bush himself has been taking away the trust fund with record speed. Not only has he run up more than $2 trillion in new debts since he has been in office, but the effects of his tax cuts will also be greater than the entire trust fund.

It’s going to be a pleasure to watch this cynical attempt to stick up working Americans to pay off the top 1% end in a train wreck. After getting away with it for four years, the President must be made to pay for this one. Full price.