Sunday Morning Yammer

Today I was in a mood for testing my limits of self-inflicted agony and watched both This Week with George Stephanopolous and Lil' Russ's Meet the Press.

On This Week George smooched with James Baker for a few minutes before talking with Judd Gregg (R. NH) and Ken Conrad (D. ND).

I'm not sure where Conrad is listed by Josh Marshall (Conscinece Caucus or Fainthearted Faction) but he is not the person we want out talking on behalf of the party on the issue of Social Security privatization. He agrees too often with his friend Senator Gregg and is positively conciliatory on the President's "plan", saying that there is a kernel of a good idea in what the President proposes. Really all we got from this interview was that any plan would have to be bipartisan. Big deal.

Nothing to say about the panel discussion other than Sam and Cokie joined George Will suggesting whatever pride they once had is gone.

On Lil' Russ's Republican amateur hour we had Charles Grassley (R. Ia) and Charles Rangel (D. NY). We also go to see Pat Buchanan and Natan Sharansky. Now I'm not expecting much from the Lil' feller these days as he has obviously sold out, hosting panels full of rabid right wing bobble-heads and meek tender-hearts to represent the opposing viewpoint.

First, Grassley and Rangel.

Iraq

Grassley first on Iraq: there is a movement toward freedom, people are naturally born free, they want to be free, you cannot impose democracy, democracy is natural, you can only impose dictatorship. Uggh. How do you talk to person whose view of the human condition was obtained from Dr. Seuss books? Rangel knows how. It is good news (the Iraqi elections) by Republican standards. Beautiful. But it wasn't worth the cost of wounded and dead Americans and Iraqis then he shifted to when do we leave, invoking his service in Korea in 1950, and we're still there. Even better.

Then Grassley makes the mistake of saying that it was one more step in the war on terrorism so we don't have another 9/11. Rangel then dangled the innaugural address in Grasslaey's face, like he was showing Grassley what the dog left on the Persian rug the night before: if the President meant what he said we would be in Syria, North Korea, and China. Grassley really looked like Rangel showed him a turd:

REP. RANGEL: I tell you this, if the president means what he says in his inaugural address, then we're going to have to go into Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and China. You know, for Americans to get so hypocritical over democracies with countries that we trade with every day, it really amazes me. And I'm telling you, we went into Iraq not for elections. We went there to knock off Saddam Hussein, but the American people thought it was connected with 9/11, there was weapons of mass destruction, there were connections with al-Qaeda. It was all a fraud. Now, if this is the benefit that we get for going to war, we cannot afford to free people all over the world. We don't have that many lives to give up. Of course, if it was a draft, we wouldn't even be talking about freeing people all over the world. We're fighting this war with other people's kids.

SEN. GRASSLEY: The president did not declare war on January the 20 in his speech. What he declared is the natural goal of human beings all over the world and that's simply to be free. It's just natural.

REP. RANGEL: By American troops?

SEN. GRASSLEY: It's in man's basic nature going back to John Locke that people want to be free and they're born free.

REP. RANGEL: And they don't want their children to die for other people's freedom.

Social Security

MR. RUSSERT: I've heard the president talk about private personal accounts. I have not heard him talk about benefit reductions or tax increases. Does he understand the true problem of Social Security?

SEN. GRASSLEY: The person who defines the issue will determine the outcome. That's an old adage. The president is a Professor Bush doing exactly what needs to be done. He's out there having a seminar with the American people on the problems of Social Security that everybody knows exists but the public has not concentrated on it. He's going to force the people of this country to concentrate on it. And I will find the solution, and all of those issues are on the table. The president knows that there's problems beyond, and he knows that personal accounts will not solve the problem. They're just a small part of the problem.

There are 100 moving parts. It's up to Chuck Grassley and Charlie Rangel in a bipartisan way to bring those parts together so that we guarantee our seniors a safe and secure retirement that they're entitled to, peace of mind that people who are retired today will not have their benefits cut. But for the present generation, the issue is that the New Deal program of the last 70 years was good for our grandparents and today, but do Grandma and Grandpa Grassley and everybody else want our children and grandchildren to have the same good deal we have? And if we don't, our grandchildren--if we don't make changes, our children and grandchildren are going have a raw deal.
***
MR. RUSSERT: Congressman Rangel, you said that you "vowed to make Republicans back down from their current effort to distance `privatization' from Social Security reform plans many of them embrace. `We're going to wrap it around their neck until they come to the floor and say they didn't mean what they said. ...Every time they say "Social Security," we'll say "privatization."'"

Is that your plan?

REP. RANGEL: I don't remember saying that, but it sure sounds like me. First of all, this whole idea of correcting a very complex piece of legislation like Social Security screams out for a bipartisan solution. I could not agree with Chairman Grassley more. But there is no Democrat in the House of Representatives, or on my committee, that this president has reached out for. I'm telling you now, Social Security reform by the president is dead, and he killed it.

In 1978, a young fellow ran for Congress in Texas. His name was George Bush. And he said then that unless you privatize Social Security it will be busted in 10 years. He thought it then, and he thinks it now. This whole concept is to scare young people into believing that their benefits are not going to be there. When I met with the president and several Republicans and Democrats on his committee and the Ways and Means Committee, the president promised us that he will present to the Congress a plan to show how he was going to do it. This privatization plan just leads to a privatization and cuts the benefits and deprives the government of the promises that we've made to those people who pay into the system.

Then Lil' Russ reverted to his Republican ways.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Congressman, December 1, 1999, this is Charlie Rangel. "I am one Democrat that truly believes that Democrats will not benefit by doing nothing on Social Security." If you oppose the president's plan, what is your plan? What would you do?

Could Rangel handle the question? Uh, I think so.

REP. RANGEL: What a question. What president's plan? The president has not presented us a plan. He talks about cutting benefits. He talks about taking away the guaranteed benefit and substitute it with the gamble on Wall Street. If the president would give us a plan, there's no question in my mind I could sit down with Charlie Grassley, some Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee, and say, "Mr. President, this is right and this is wrong."

But why should the Democrats, when there is no crisis, and I think the president is backing off of that, when the president is talking about cutting up the taxes by over a trillion dollars, not putting the budget figures for the war in there? We got tens of thousands of middle-income people that will get caught with a tax with the alternative minimum tax crushing them, and then all of a sudden, on his watch, he says that he wants to privatize Social Security, and we can't find Republicans embracing it. He doesn't buy the Republican ideas. We can't find Bill Thomas embracing them. We find House Republicans rejecting it. And you're asking me for the Democratic plan?

Russ then showed that he may somewhere up there have a couple testicles that want to drop.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, shouldn't there be truth in packaging, the suggestion being made around the country that if we have private or personal accounts, then that's going to really be a big step towards dealing with the long-term financial problems of Social Security?

SEN. GRASSLEY: OK.

MR. RUSSERT: Here's what a memo that was written by Peter Wehner, who's Bush's director of strategic initiatives. And he says that, "The suspicion that personal savings accounts may have little to do with making Social Security solvent over the long run was reinforced by his e-mail. If we duck our duty on benefit calculations, it can have serious short-term economic consequences. Here's why. If we borrow $1 - $2 trillion dollars to cover transition costs for personal savings accounts and make no changes to wage indexing," future payoffs to recipients, "we'll have borrowed trillions and will still confront more than $10 trillion in unfunded liabilities."

So when the president talks about private accounts, the second piece of that is what has to be done to pay for those? Now, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has done an analysis of what the commission that reported to President Bush recommended in terms of wage indexing. And this is what they found, that under current law, in 2042, recipients would get a 36 percent replacement, money--their three highest years' income, a 36 percent replacement; 2075 it would be 36 percent. Under a proposal of so-called wage indexing, it would drop to 27 percent, and in 2075 to 20 percent, which would be a benefit cut of 26 percent and 46 percent. OK. Now, that's reality. That's part of what an honest presentation to the American people would include. Why haven't we heard that?

Hmmm. Yes? Senator Grassley?

SEN. GRASSLEY: The president has a rare opportunity to get this issue out there. And in the next months, this is all going to be made transparent. There's no way that you cover this up. I don't want to cover it up. Everything has to be on the table. But here's what you got to look at. You have got to look at the fact that we do have a problem, and now's the time to do something about it. And there's 100 moving parts. What do you put together to get a solution? We can do that. But with the president not defining the issue with the American people first, nothing's going to get done. So he's doing that.

Nope. That won't cut it.

Then Lil' Russ's testicles shrank back up into his abdomen.

MR. RUSSERT: OK, so let's talk on the table. The number of people on Social Security is going to double from 40 million to 80 million. Life expectancy is now going--78, 79, 80 years old.

REP. RANGEL: Exactly.

MR. RUSSERT: People on the program for 15 years. There used to be 16 workers per retiree. There's soon to be three workers-retiree, two workers-retiree. Knowing all that, hearing President Clinton, what should we do? Should we raise the cap on the payroll tax? Should we have a means testing for affluent Americans? Should we have an indexing of the cost of living or indexing of benefits, wages, price? What should we do?

Oh well.

Here was the best moment:

SEN. GRASSLEY: Everything's on the table as far as I'm concerned. I've said it once. I'll say it twice and I'm going to say it until I put a bill before the United States Senate. And there are bipartisan groups, people working together, to consider all these things right now. Charlie may not want to admit it, but there's some Democrats coming to the table. But what you're proposing...

REP. RANGEL: Not in the House.

Priceless.

As to Buchanan and Sharansky...just read the transcript.