No Plan, Just No

Harry Reid wrote an OpEd in USA today titled First, put aside GOP plan. His first paragraph says In the current Social Security debate, only one political party is saying "no" and refusing to come to the table to address the long-term challenges facing Social Security: the Republican Party. But his title proves that wrong, because he is clearly saying the Democratic position is to start off with rejecting the Bush proposal calling for private accounts.

He goes on with: three starting points:

• First, do no harm. We should not cut Social Security's funding by diverting trillions of dollars from the trust fund.No one is proposing diverting trillions of dollars from the trust fund. For one thing, the trust fund does not contain any money; it just contains IOUs (bonds) which will have to be redeamed to pay benefits, and what is being proposed is they be redeamed now and the money put into private accounts where they will earn interest, so when the individual retires, he will have the benefit of compounded interest
• Second, we should pay back the Social Security Trust Fund for all money used for other purposes. If we simply honor existing obligations to the trust fund, Social Security will be solvent for 40 to 50 years.Is he admitting that the trust fund does not contain money, and that it has been spent for other purposes?
• Third, we should promote savings. That means exploring new incentives for personal savings and increasing public savings by restoring fiscal discipline and ending the Bush administration's record run of deficits.Allow private accounts to be created and let the young workers see their money compounding, and they will be encouraged to put additional money into their 401Ks so that it grows too.

Dale Franks bloggs After reading it [Senator Reid's OpEd], it became clear that, not only have the Democrats lost the art of spinning a political narrative, they appear to have lost the art of contributing anything to our national conversation other than opposition to whatever it is the Republicans want to do.

In his article, the good senator admits there is no Democratic Party plan to deal with Social Security. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. All the senator knows is that the Republican plan must be stopped. After that—and, apparently, only after that—can the Democrats start working on a plan to ensure the SS program's future solvency.

After admitting that his party has no plan, no suggestions beyond an airy-fairy list of "goals", and nothing else to offer beyond saying "no" to the republican plan, he ends the piece with this unintentionally hilarious line: "After all, there is no more positive agenda than saving Social Security."

Dale is right, the Dems don't have a plan. They just know they don't like Private Accounts.