This is not a bad letter, if I say so myself.

It would have had a bit more impact if the Daily Reflector hadn’t sat on it for two weeks.

LETTER: Bush using scare tactics on Social Security
Sunday, January 30, 2005, The Daily Reflector

Liar, liar, pants on fire. That grade school doggerel is appropriate for the administration's push for Social Security privatization.

Like the Iraq war, we are being misled with “facts” created to both mislead and frighten us.

The president and his shills continue to emphasize 2018 as a sort of “doomsyear” when Social Security will go bust. Then it's 2042, or 2052; the story changes – just like the rationales for Bush's tax cuts and his war in Iraq.

Premiums pay all current benefits and then some. The excess is being invested in Treasury bonds. What will actually happen in 2018 is that those T-bonds will begin to share paying benefits along with the premiums from current workers.

These bonds are essentially the same bonds that you bought for your grandkids and the Chinese and Japanese governments buy as investments. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security's bonds run out in 2052. According to Social Security's trustees, the doomsyear is 2042.

After 2042 (or 2052), “only” 75 percent to 80 percent of benefits will be payable – hardly the end of the world. During the next 75 years, its shortfall will amount to just 0.7 percent of national income, according to the trustees, or 0.4 percent, according to the CBO. The long-term cost of Bush's tax cuts is five times the CBO's estimate of Social Security's deficit for the next 75 years. Why not cancel a fat-cat's tax cut or two?

Bush is trying to scare us by suggesting that failure is imminent. What's really happening is the conservative's dream: reversing the New Deal and canceling the little guy's safety net. Tell them no.

BRUCE BERBERICH
Greenville