Bush Plan Aids Poor, Squeezes the Rest

LAT reports As the full dimensions of President Bush's Social Security plan come into view, so too does a broader vision: improving benefits for the poorest Americans while reducing the reliance of everyone else on government programs that long have seen them through economic difficulties.

That sounds very reasonable. Take care of the poor, but the government should not take care of everyone.

Although Bush devoted most of his prime-time news conference Thursday to describing how he would expand Social Security protections, virtually all of his improvements would be aimed at the bottom one-third of American wage earners. The remaining two-thirds would see their future Social Security benefits curtailed, a reduction that they'd be encouraged to make up by saving and investing of their own.

UNTRUE!!! He did not propose ANY cutback in what they would get. He only proposed limiting the increases in benefits to increases in inflation.

The president often portrays his effort as simply trying to accommodate reality; funds to pay full Social Security benefits are expected to run short toward the middle of the century. But his approach also corresponds to a long-held conservative goal of reducing Washington's influence in the lives of ordinary Americans and to the aim of his chief political strategist Karl Rove to realign the nation along Republican principles. "What you're going to see is an effort to scale back middle-class entitlements that many people do not need and to become more focused on the antipoverty aspects of these programs," said Michael Tanner, an expert on Social Security at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank that advocates small government. "We're going to tell non-poor Americans that they are going to have to save more on their own and not depend on a transfer from government," he said.

That makes a lot of sense.

Bush has sought to use this targeted approach at least once before in proposing to create a Medicare drug benefit that would go almost exclusively to poor Americans rather than to the elderly. Although Congress ultimately approved a benefit that did go to seniors generally, the law includes substantial assistance for those with incomes less than 150% of the poverty level, or $14,355 for an individual. Tanner and others predicted that Bush would pursue similar targeted tactics if he tackled Medicare's overall costs, which many policy analysts described as a looming crisis that, in contrast with Social Security, needed immediate attention. "Bush and the Republican leadership are committed to seeing universal programs like Social Security and Medicare turned into means-tested welfare programs," said Robert J. Blendon, a health policy professor at Harvard.

Helping the poor makes sense, and it is what Jesus encouraged. But taking a lot of money from current workers to give it to retired people that do not need it, does not make sense.

On its face, the idea of focusing public dollars on those most in need seems to have an irrefutable logic. But some analysts warn that the approach could erode public support for programs like Social Security and substantially shrink the protections the government provides Americans.