Do Republicans know how screwed we'd be if Bush's second largest goal of privatizing Social Security happened?

[Don sack]

Consider if everybody's retirement had been solely tied to the market with essentially no safety net as the Republicans have wanted for years and tried to achieve immediately when Bush took office. The recession would have wiped out a huge majority of retirement funding for a large portion of America and we'd be in a full on depression far worse than the one in the 1930's.

[agreeableapple178]

Good thing it didn't happen, then... huh.

What if a President hypothetically spent 4 trillion dollars in a 3 month time frame just after being elected... oh wait.

[bomb698]

NEWSFLASH : Bush is no longer the President.

Woulda coulda shoulda.

Who is the current President and why is he running the country into the ground and why would anyone in their right mind fall for anything he ever said?

[MisunderstoodHard977]

Hmmmm, like everyone's 401Ks that are climbing slowly back up, no thanks to anti-capitalists like Biden...
Would still rather have control over my own money than allow the government.
SoS will be bankrupted of its own accord in due time... 2017 is a Conservative figure.
Then who will you blame?

[Not I]

Would not matter if obama socializes healthcare. The government will decide keeping us alive into old age just is not cost effective.

[brown9500.v10]

That is probably why the economy exploded on Bush's watch.

The Neocons were probably counting on our retirement funds to prop up the derivatives market a few more months, so it would crater after they inevitably lost in 2008, and then they would blame the Democrats.

[ohbrother]

We are screwed anyway. Everytime Social Security has been raided it has been a Democrat President and Democrat Congress. Bill Clinton being the last. He raided Social Security for 158 billion. Read the CBO report of March 1999.

Here I'll save you the trouble.

This is from the C.B.O. 1999. and what Clinton did. The only way a surplus can be created is by lowering taxes and cut spending. Neither of which the Democrats have ever done.

Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its preliminary re estimate of the White House budget. This follows the Joint Committee on Taxation's (JCT) re estimate of the Clinton White House's tax provisions last week. Together, CBO and JCT are Congress' official estimators -- nonpartisan entities that Clinton himself promised to use when he first took office back in 1993.

President Clinton has promised to protect Social Security, to reduce the debt to the maximum extent possible, to control spending, and reduce taxes. But, Congress' official estimators show that on all four counts, the President's budget fails. Instead, Clinton's budget raids the Social Security trust fund for $158 billion in five years, it artificially erases the surplus, it lowers the public debt less than doing nothing would, it increases spending, and it raises taxes by $89.7 billion over the 1999-2009 period.

Clinton Raids Social Security: According to CBO, Clinton spends $40 billion of the Social Security surplus in his budget's first year (2000) and $158 billion over the first five years (2000-2004).

This is the same Social Security surplus that he has promised to save in its entirety.

[Heavy Weapons guy]

KEEP CRYING BABY!!!!!

[easilydissolved]

Yeah, I know some people's 401 (k)'s getting wiped out when the recession hit. All I could think was, "Thank god Bush failed getting that passed."

[jeeper_peeper321]

Except Bush's plan would not have privatized a huge portion of SS.

It would not have effected current retirees at all.

And was limited to just 10% of your SS contributions for those who volunteered to invest.

Yes, it was a 100% volunteer plan.

No one had to invest 10%, it was their choice.

And it would have depended on what they allowed people to invest in,

It wasn't like they were gonna allow you to invest in any stock or mutual fund you wanted to.

So stop trying to act like Bush's plan would have meant all SS funds were invested in the market and they would all have taken a hit.

That's just not true.