Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Social Security Hypocrisy

Over at AEI's Enterprise Blog

4 comments:

Bruce Webb said...

Talk about asymmetry and hypocrisy.

The charter of CSSS mandated private accounts and barred any inclusion of payroll tax increases as even a component of any plan. How was the President's barring of the latter less hypocritical than the Democrats demand that Private Accounts be dropped?

In this respect Bush imposed two conditions and Democrats countered with one and the asymmetry is on the D side? This was particularly egregious given the subsequent acceptance of payroll tax increases in plans like LMS.

Megan may not get this. But as I warn everyone don't mess with Biggs unless you have your numbers down. Because he is good.

Andrew G. Biggs said...

There's a differences between saying what you want and refusing to talk to people until they give in to what you want. President Bush would have talked to people who opposed and wouldn't accept carve out accounts, and maybe they could have convinced him to go with an add-on account or even no account at all. I don't know. But the other side wouldn't talk to him unless he unconditionally gave up on carve out accounts. It's not the same thing.

Bruce Webb said...

The CSSS guidelines say otherwise.

Andrew G. Biggs said...

President Bush wasn't bound by the CSSS guidelines. For instance, they said that payroll taxes couldn't be increased yet President Bush himself said in 2005 that he was willing to consider raising the tax max. There's a difference between what he asked his commission to produce for him and what he'd be willing to compromise on with the other party.