Plan for Social Security -familiar Bush strategy -Dem rejection needed now

[papau]

"If Democrats plan to come out against Bush's plan, they should weigh in now. As many of their leaders can attest, the public has little patience for complaints registered too softly or too late."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/12/28/plan_for_social_security_relies_on_an_immediate_familiar_bush_strategy/

NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Plan for Social Security relies on an immediate, familiar Bush strategy
By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff | December 28, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The run-up to President Bush's plan to deal with Social Security is looking a lot like the run-up to his plan to deal with Saddam Hussein.

The expected Social Security shortfall has been a perennial domestic concern in much the same way that Hussein's intransigence with arms inspectors was a perennial foreign-policy concern: From the White House to Congress to think tanks, policy makers worried about it, but presidents (including Bush) felt no immediate need to deal with it.<snip>

Much as the Iraq war was preceded by speeches designed to show Hussein in the most threatening light, the Bush economic summit seemed designed to dominate a slow news week with the idea that failing to deal with Social Security now will hurt the national economy.<snip>

Still, the link between the current economy and a Social Security deficit that will begin to strike benefits in decades is every bit as speculative and theoretical as the link between Hussein and the war on terrorism in late 2002. But few people in the political mainstream would dismiss the idea out of hand, and arguing that Bush's predictions are a bit too dire seems unnecessary to most Democrats at this stage.

But what stage is it? Just as Bush now seems to have been set on invading Iraq during the discussion stage of the war, he seems to know what he wants to do with Social Security during the discussion stage of this big initiative, too.<snip>


Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.