Blog For Arizona

Andy: Six More Weeks?

It seems Republicans are giving themselves 6 more weeks (more or less) to change the public's "tepid view," or else Republican leadership may decide to reconsider legislation til (maybe) next year.

The GOP strategists stressed that the six-week goal is not a hard deadline for a political breakthrough, but they said the public's tepid view of Social Security change cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. The directive raises the possibility that Republicans will have to reconsider whether legislation can be passed this year, as Bush wants.

Of course, they probably won't bring it up next year because no one wants to propose anything specific right before facing voters, especially after the disasters of the recent townhall meetings. Bush has squandered a lot of his so-called political capital on this issue. It may be more difficult for him to get a unified caucus on other bills. The administration, too, seems to be backing away from more and more
elements of its plan. What plan? The one they insist they don't have, of course. They've been forced to admit that transition costs would be too high and that the plan would not accomplish its stated goal of healing the system's finances. Now it appears that they might even accept a plan with no carve out.

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow indicated Wednesday that the White House would accept a Social Security overhaul that does not divert the program’s payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts, a major shift in the administration’s position.

Republicans seem to be in retreat and it looks like we may have won this battle. But the war's been going on for 70 years now, so Republicans aren't likely to give up at this point. In fact, these are probably just tactical maneuvers to get a few Democrats to think that compromise is possible. Of course, any compromise bill would have the compromise stripped right out of it in conference committee. Even experienced Senators still seem to think it's possible to work with this White House and this Congressional leadership. They have forgotten what previous "compromise" has gotten them: the compromise of their integrity. It's also possible that this whole
controversy was created just to distract us - with SS "reform" they know won't fly - from the real agenda: bankruptcy and tort "reform." These two bills will pass with the help of many Democrats who feel they did their bit on SS. Winning on an issue is fun. But it's no reason to relax.

Speaking of experienced Senators: has Leiberman seen the light?

[from the New Haven Register (registration req. for the whole article)]

"I don’t see how you make Social Security more solvent … by taking trillions of dollars out of the trust fund," Lieberman said, taking his first pulic stance on President Bush’s proposal.

or is he just hearing footsteps?

posted by ciceraw @ 3/03/2005 11:09:00 AM