In using a 27 year old comment by president Bush against him on Social Security, senate minority leader Harry Reid has left himself open to attacks by Republicans because of comments he made long ago, that contradict what he's saying now.

The S.S. battle is reaching a crescendo as old comments go over the top in this slugfest to save the government program or overhaul it to keep pace with the changing economy.

President Bush made this comment in 1978 during his bid for Congress saying that Social Security will “go bust in 10 years unless there are some changes.”


“Senator Reid has claimed Social Security as the ‘most successful program in the history of the world,’ yet he wrote legislation 20 years ago allowing himself and other members of Congress to stay out of Social Security,” said Brian Jones, the RNC’s communications director.

Reid’s bill would have kept all federal employees hired by the government after Jan. 1, 1984, from the shackles of Social Security, according to a Republican summary of the bill, H.R. 3589, introduced in July 1983.

Gary Burtless an expert on Social Security, and fellow economist at the Brookings Institution said “One of outrages of allowing some people to be outside of Social Security is they’re not making contributions to the program,”

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” just last month, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) used a Bush quote from 27 years ago by the Midland, Texas, Reporter-Telegram.

“This is a man, President Bush, who said in 1978 that Social Security would go bust in 1988 unless the system was privatized,” she said. “He was wrong then. This is the president whose White House said we’ve been waiting for this opportunity to change Social Security.”

Notice that the president knew then that Social Security was in trouble! His timing may have been a bit off, but he was right about the problems facing social security, and now because of democrats even more time has elapsed thus increasing the urgency.

In typical and continual obstructionist fashion, Reid showed no respect whatsoever for the elected leader of the free world, when the liberal democrat personally referred to the president as "this guy."

Democrats feel the U.S. Constitution is a "living-breathing document" that can be changed on their whims according to current liberal views, but that their gargantuan and faultering government programs must not be touched, and that raising taxes on the people to keep them going and secure their jobs while stealing more money from the public is an acceptable way to govern. Seems they've forgotten what the Boston Tea Party was all about!

A Wall Street Journal article titled "The Cynical Idealism Behind Social Security" by Bill Voegeli speaks the truth: "Liberalism depends, in addition, on the reliable psychological tendency to treat whatever we become accustomed to as something we are entitled to. No task in democratic politics is more difficult than taking things away. As a result, conservatives have won many electoral victories since 1964, but few domestic policy victories."

Democrats love to create massive programs and bureaucracies that benefit the public little but keep the government growing to huge proportions, thus keeping them in control of the people and their money.

Reid’s has been quoted saying that “there is no more positive agenda than saving Social Security” then he contradicted himself just two days later, when he said, “The so-called Social Security crisis exists in only one place: the minds of Republicans.”

Well, you can't have it both ways Harry, it's time to deal with reality!

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# posted by OTTMANN @ 4/26/2005 12:15:00 PM