(5/23/2005) President Bush is just finishing up his 60-day 60-city tour where he has been trying to sell his plan for Social Security privatization. The American people have now had a chance to hear about Bush's plan and their verdict has come back in the form of poll numbers; Answer: "Not a ice cubes chance in hell you two-faced thief".

Bush's corrupt plan to reform the Social Security system can easily be summarized with the following words:

Scam - Con - Rip-off - Looting - Bait & Switch - Smoke & Mirrors - Slight of Hand - Pick Pocket - Fraud - Flimflam - Hoodwinked

Those are my words, but to prove their accuracy just look at the words Bush has been using to sell his Social Security privatization plan, and his history of lies about other issues.

Bush talks about the low rate of return the Social Security trust fund earns compared to what an investment in the stock market might earn, but he leaves out the fact that his policies have already robbed the Social Security "lockbox" of nearly $600 billion in surpluses during the past four years. And he has added another $1.3 trillion to the federal debt. This brings the total owned to the Social Security trust fund to $1.7 trillion, and the total federal debt to $7.8 trillion.

Also, based on Bush's current budget projections he will continue to spend every penny of the Social Security surplus for the next four years as well as adding another $2 trillion dollars to the federal debt.

When you add this $1.7 trillion Social Security IOU to the current federal debt of $6.1 trillion you have deferred tax liability, or total debt, of over $7.8 trillion. That means that every man, woman, and child in the U.S. currently owes around $26,981 on this debt, plus interest.

Of course most of us can't afford to pay that much money in one lump sum, and we would probably revolt against any politician who tried to force us. Therefore, we must service this debt by paying interest on it, which is about $1 billion per day, 365 days a year, or about $1,219 per person per year. And it's only that cheap because interest rates are currently very low. In addition, Bush is adding a little over $.7 trillion to the debt every year, so those number are constantly rising.

Ironically, this is the same Social Security "lockbox" that the Republicans hounded President Clinton about during his entire 8 years in office, and now for some strange reason it's not a big issue for them any more. I believe that most of the American people are now starting to see the Republican's hypocrisy on this issue as well as other issues, and Bush's recent poll numbers are reflecting an awakening of the public. 

Bush's budgets have already given every penny of the Social Security surplus to the richest people in America in the form of tax cuts. President Reagan did the exact same thing after Alan Greenspan's plan to double the Social Security tax on workers was passed into law.

It wasn't until President Clinton's took office that the federal budget returned to positive territory after he raised the top tax rates, increasing the number of tax brackets, and closed some tax loopholes. These extra revenues created the largest budget surpluses in our country's history.

As a result of the Democrat's budget conservatism, that not one Republican voted for, the outlook for Social Security, and our economy as a whole, was very bright. And then Bush came along.

When Bush got into office in 2000 he inherited a projected 10 year budget surplus of over $5.7 trillion from Clinton, and in four short years he has managed to turn that around with reckless tax cuts for the rich and big spending increases. We now have a projected 10 year budget deficit of around $6 trillion.

But, Bush, who does not appear to be very bright for someone with an MBA from Harvard, wants you to believe what he is telling you, and not the actual reality. He wants you to have "faith" in him, and not use your mind, common sense, and thoughtful judgements to look at the facts and to figure out for yourselves that he is just a con-man who is whoring himself for a few families with huge concentrations of wealth. Bush implies that if we just have some faith in his leadership, and his plan for Social Security reform, we will all be able to live out our retirement years in the lap of Social Security luxury.

Do you remember in 2001 when Bush told us, "Any deficits my administration creates will be small and short term."?, Well, we can now look back and see if he lied, and he did. We now have the largest budget deficits in our history, $650 billion deficit projected for 2005, $567 in 2004, $538 in 2003, $317 in 2002, and $32 in 2001. We also have the largest trade deficits in our history at around $650 billion. We are also starting to see interest rates and inflation rearing up their ugly heads.

Despite these horrible economic results, that appear to be growing out of control, Bush continues pushing for more tax cuts for the rich, more corporate welfare, and more spending increases.

Do you remember in 2001 when Bush told us "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction that threaten the security of America"? Well, we can now look back and see if he lied, and he did. There are now over 1,580 American soldiers dead, and over 12,000 have been wounded and no WMDs were found. Why were no WMDs found? Because that was not the real reason Bush took America to war. Bush needed to start a war in Iraq so that he would have an excuse to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for the benefit of the industrial-military-complex, to further undermine the financial stability of the American government, to enrich the already rich oil companies, and to satisfy the neo-cons in his administration.

Taxpayers, mostly middle class workers, have been given a bill for Bush's manufactured "war on terror" of over $350 billion dollars, and the war is not over yet. And while all this money has been wasted, and these lives have been lost, Bush has been lavishing tax cuts on the rich while at the same time running huge deficits and cutting funds for education, veterans, children's health care, police, fireman, and other public services and social programs.

Therefore, clearly Bush is a liar, and he is lying about Social Security. Despite his words telling us "that everything is on the table" in terms of solutions for Social Security, he has put forth only one solution; Social Security privatization. He wants to divert trillions of dollars out of Social Security and into the stock market. His plan would require the federal government to borrow an additional $2 trillion dollars over the next ten years to finance the cost of establishing and managing these private accounts.

Bush's plan for Social Security reform does not add up to an improvement in any way, form, or fashion, and he knows it, but he doesn't care because it's all just a con designed to rob the Social Security system. We are the marks and the trillions of dollars from the pockets of working Americans is the prize. In other words, Bush and his shyster friends on Wall Street are planning on looting the Social Security system at the expense of hardworking men and women in America.

The way the Social Security system works now is that Social Security taxes are collected by the government and then spent to pay benefits to retirees, survivor benefits, and benefits to disabled workers, and any left over surpluses are invested in treasury bills. However, because our government is running very large deficits the entire Social Security surplus, which is currently running around $170 billion a year, is being borrowed to pay for other government programs. Which in Bush's case, and in Reagan's case, those funds were used to pay for huge tax cuts for the very wealthy and massive increases in military spending.

So now Bush is traveling all around the country claiming that Social Security needs to be fixed right now, and he has the best solution. Which is like taking you car to a service station for an oil change and the mechanic pours a bunch of sand in your engine and then tells you that you need a new engine and he can help you with the repair for a few thousand more dollars. The law defines this type of criminal action as a felony fraud and the guilty party is usually arrested and put in jail.

Bush claims that his privatization plan will enable workers to earn a higher rate of return on their money by investing it in the stock market, but this is also a fraudulent sales pitch. It is true that treasury bills only pay around 1.5% interest, but because the current Social Security system has less than a 1% administrative overhead cost it is still a great deal for workers. Under Bush's plan there is the possibility of a higher rate of return from the stock market, typically around 3% to 5% per year over the long term, but there are also higher risk involved, and the administration cost skyrockets from less than 1% up to 3% to 7% of revenues.

It is important to remember that Social Security was created as an "insurance" program, and not a "retirement savings" program. The government already has several other programs in place to encourage tax free retirement savings for individuals, including IRA's, 401k's, and other company sponsored pensions, profit sharing, stock options, and savings programs. However, Bush wants to change Social Security system from an insurance program into a personal savings program.

We already have a real life example of how Bush's proposed Social Security privatization plan worked in Chile. In 1981 General Augusto Pinchet, the mass murder of Chile, was sold on privatizing his country's Social Security system by the "Chicago Boys", who included a couple of the GOP's most important con-men, economist Milton Friedman and Bush's good friend George Shultz. Since that time a majority of the people in Chile now find themselves with a poverty level retirement savings. But a bunch of American banks and insurance companies have gotten incredibility rich off this privatization scam, including: Alliance Capital (Axa Insurance); American Express; American International Group insurance; Barclays, PLC; Citicorp/Salomon Smith Barney; Deutsche Bank; Fidelity Investments; Goldman Sachs; Edward Jones; Mellon Financial; Merrill Lynch; JP Morgan Chase; Morgan Stanley; Northern Trust; T. Rowe Price; Prudential Financial Management; Charles Schwab; State Street Corp.; and Vanguard Group.

Some people would call that kind of money "blood money", but these bankers and insurance company executives are clearly not bothered by the details.

Bush's Social Security scam was made even more apparent in a memo that was released from the Bush White House. Following is the part of the memo that really exposes the true nature of Bush's, and the GOP's, ideology, motivations, and plan for Social Security privatization, and it reads as follows:

"For the first time in six decades the Social Security battle is one we can win and in doing so we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country."

There it is in black and white. The Republicans are going to finally get rid of the Social Security system that they have despised for 60 years. They are going to transform our society into one that does not provide the American people with social safety nets, but instead places them at the whims of a free market system, like the one Friedman advocates. According to their political philosophy there doesn't need to be any government sponsored programs to to soften the blows from the ups and downs that are common in a capitalist free market economy.

Bush and the Republicans in Congress don't want the government to help all the American people, like the U.S. Constitution implies the government should, but they want the government to be transformed into a plutocracy that only serves the very wealth. They are creating a government that comes at the people, and not from the people. Their ideology will result in a huge step backwards for our society, and already has in many ways.

Personally, I believe the Republican's uncompassionate free market ideology, and the actions they are taking to bring this ideology to fruition, is nothing short of treason.

Finally, the current Social Security system is a very long way from being in any real fiscal trouble, at least until 2041, and there are several minor adjustments that could be made along the way to the tax rates, retirement age, income tax cap, and benefit formulas that would easily extend the solvency of the Social Security system for another 100 years with very little pain.

The best thing our government leaders could do right now to insure the long term solvency of the Social Security system is to balance the federal budget and use any budget surpluses to repay the IOUs in the Social Security trust fund.

However, Bush and the Republicans in Congress are not interested in fixing the Social Security system, despite what they are telling us, but they are interested in destroying the Social Security system. They want to continue robbing its surpluses by giving tax cuts to the wealthy. They want to undermine its strengths by increasing its overhead cost through privatization. And they want to change its designed purpose from a government run insurance program to a Wall Street gamble disguised as a retirement savings program so their rich friends can bleed the system dry.

Don't let Bush and the GOP fool you on their plan to reform Social Security like they did with their Medicare legislation, or their war on terror, or their tax cuts for the rich, or their promises to balance the budget, or their words of compassion and conservatism because this time the "trail of tears" will be from your eyes and it will lead you to a place you don't want to be.