Okay, I'm Back Now

So it's been four months since I updated this beast, and Jeff Gannon/James Guckert was the hot item back then. There are a number of things I want to get to (filibusters, Bolton, creationism, McCain vs. Hillary, 2008 in general, and the looming war about judicial nominations) but I'm gonna start out one at a time.

I think Blue America handed Bush his first major defeat in Social Security, and I'm pretty psyched. If you read in depth about his Social Security tactics, it was essentially an issue of accounting. I'm a writing student. I don't do much accounting in my line of work. But the Bush Social Security plan was based upon the assumption that the Social Security trust fund was going to
run out. Answer being, that depended on the economy. Okay, fine. Looks like
we need to do some long-term planning. Agreed.

Here's what started to get me mad- although you'd think, after five years of this pigheaded ignorance in the White House, I'd be used to it. The Bush team claimed that anybody who opposed their team was "against Social Security reform." Are you kidding? Everyone in Washington has a plan for Social Security reform, and it's my personal belief that everyone's is a little bit different. But claiming that your plan is the ONLY plan? Even Teddy Kennedy doesn't pull this kind of crap.

I was reading The Hill, which I highly recommend to anybody who gets their regular news from CNN.com (like me.) If you want a lot of intelligent commentary on the most up-to-date political scuffles- and some good early warning before they arrive- the Hill has it. Granted, Roll Call (the other daily Capitol Hill newspaper) is significantly better written and researched, but they're kind of expensive to sign up for. When I win the lottery, or rob a bank, I'm going to shell out the $309 a year to get Roll Call delivered to my apartment. After I pony up the extra $40 to renew my Foreign Affairs subscription.

Side note about Foreign Affairs: They raised the price from $24 a year to $44. I paid $18 because I sent them a photocopy of my student ID and paid the student rate- and because it was cheaper than the Economist. It bugs me that FA expects me to pay an extra $26 a year now, but they must assume that their target market can afford to pay it. Most of the ever-multiplying ads are directed at CEOs, and not political-science-nerdy college kids. They even eliminated the student discount. Maybe I can get a CEO to pay for my subscription.

ANYWAY. Back to the Hill. I was reading a commentary by Lynne Sweet, who discussed a recent interview with former Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois. Rosty, as she refers to him, claimed that Bush could probably strike fear into the hearts of Democrats by taking his plan off the table and saying, "Fine. You come up with a plan of your own." Theoretically, all of us blue-state types would be running around like chickens with our heads cut off since we'd been focusing primarily on dismantling Bush's ideas. (Rostenkowski, I might add, was a Democrat.) The fact is, Rostenkowski (and Scott McClellan, who I hate even more than Ari Fleischer) has forgotten about the over-$90k rule. All earnings are taxed at 12.4% to fund Social Security until you pass $90,000. Then they're not taxed at all. Removing this cap would essentially eliminate the funding shortfall.

This seems like a pretty logical option to me, but I strongly doubt anybody on the red side of the aisle would get behind it. It brings me back to one of those things that drives me crazy about Republicans (and here I'm not saying conservatives, I'm saying Republicans.) They manage to convince the rural poor that there is more value in voting "guns, God and gays" than in doing anything that would economically benefit them. I have no doubt that people like Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts would be hollering all the way back to Kansas, distorting the plan and saving a lot of money for the wealthiest folks in America at the expense of their rural, poor constituents.

(Does anybody else ever get Pat Robertson the evangelist and Pat Roberts the Kansas senator mixed up? I think they're one and the same, and it's a Republican plot.)

Regardless of how obvious the solution to Social Security seems to be, and how disgusting it seems to the Republican Party, it seems to be a moot point. A comfortable majority of the country thinks it belongs in the trash can, and even though Bush is out there campaigning for it, he's getting hammered. He's even taking a one-two hit from Social Security and the Iraq war, where the rest of the country is finally starting to wake up. Like I said on my day-after-Election-Day piece, look to 2006. If we build a strong Democratic identity, and include some decent contenders for 2008, we may not be able to derail the Republican freight train, but we can sure as hell slow it down.

An important aspect of this is exploiting the "six-year itch" and making Bush look vulnerable. If his leadership comes under major fire- which he's thus far been able to avoid by simply ignoring the question- and he can't ignore the criticism any more, he falters and collapses. Guaranteed. The reason George W. Bush has succeeded so far is because, when he's confronted with intelligent people who disagree with him, he claims that they're out of touch with reality and instead of offering alternatives, they're creating roadblocks. When a majority of this country starts to move in a different direction than George Bush, he's going to become accountable-and then we're going to eat him alive.