Lawmakers Seek Accounting Of Push For Social Security

[Mark E. Smith]

Bush's campaign may cost millions.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's ongoing Social Security blitz is unusual in scale in the selling of a domestic policy, mobilizing the president and vice president, four cabinet secretaries, and 17 lesser officials, down to an associate director of strategic planning for the White house budget office.

It may also be one of the most costly in memory, well into the millions of dollars, according to some rough, unofficial calculations.

House Appropriations Committee Republicans have quietly asked the administration for an accounting of its "60 Stops in 60 Days" blitz. And on Weds, Rep Henry Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the Govt reform Committee, formally asked the Govt Accountability Office not only for the cost but also "whether the Bush administration has crossed the line from education to propaganda."

"No one disputes the right of the President to make his policy recommendations known to Congress and the public," Waxman wrote in a letter to the US comptroller general, Davis Walker. "Yet there is a vital line between legitimately informing the public, as the president did in his State of the Union address, and commandeering the vast resources of the federal govt to fund a political campaign for Social Security privitization."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/04/10/lawmakers_seek_accounting_of_push_for_social_security/

If there is one thing old Shrub knows how to do, it's how spend the taxpayer's hard earned money.

[whistle]

1. My guess would be 60 trip stops, $60 million

[rodeodance]

2. sot the Repubicans havd "quietly" asked the administration!!--what

kind of an answer will they get --? A whispter--shhhh...

,,,,,House Appropriations Committee Republicans have quietly asked the administration for an accounting of its "60 Stops in 60 Days" blitz.

[liberal N proud]

8. ____________

[Zorra]

3. Social Security could be solvent into the 51st century if Bush would just

stop frivolously wasting all our tax money.

Iraq has cost us what, over $160 billion already, and with no end in sight, it is nothing but a giant bottomless hole that Buh just keeps tossing our money into.

And now he is spending $60 million of our money that could be used to make SS solvent by advocating a scam to destroy it.

Republicans are the borrow and spend party, no doubt about it.

[mrdmk]

4. Everything Mr. Bush Jr. has touched as turned to shit!

And so has this country. Wake-up America!

[whistle]

5. We all have heard of the Midas touch, well with Bush it's the....

...Shitidas touch :woohoo:.... :bounce:.... :rofl:

[mrdmk]

6. The Midas touch was a tale not to be followed

Everything King Midas had touch turned to gold. That was well and good until the he had to feed himself, hence the nutrition he touched also turned to gold which went against him or at his digestive system. Tums anybody.

edit: spelling

[lovuian]

7. Yep this is a President out of control!!!

Yes and Bush is not saving anything!!!

[Robbien]

9. Bush Soc-Sec roadshow pushes legal limits

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The Bush administration has spent millions of dollars in the past two months on its campaign to overhaul Social Security, narrowly skirting laws that prohibit spending of taxpayer funds to indirectly lobby Congress.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and more than 20 other administration officials have blanketed the country since early February, delivering more than 100 speeches in 37 states in an effort to rally the public behind Bush's Social Security plans. Although no hard figures on costs are available, rough calculations show the White House and other agencies have spent at least $2.2 million on the campaign so far.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has been asked by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to investigate the costs of the pro-privatization effort. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have also asked quietly for an accounting, according to the Washington Post.

Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, asked the GAO to determine whether "the Bush administration has crossed the line from education to propaganda."

. . .

Typically, the courts have allowed taxpayer-funded publicity efforts as long as no overt appeal is made for listeners or readers to contact their representatives or senators about a specific bill. Bush says his goal is go directly to the people and persuade them to pressure Congress to change Social Security. He explicitly tells his audiences to write their congressman.

http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=26922269&brk=1

[Melodybe]

10. Well, duh!

What did they expect?

Bush is using our own money to royally fuck us over.

[acmejack]

11. And a fine job he is doing!

If only he were as competent in any other facet of governance...

[deadparrot]

12. Huh? You think?

:shrug:

[UrbScotty]

13. Bush breaking the law?

What will they tell us next, that FDR was a Democrat?

</sarcasm>

[whistle]

17. Bush wants everyone to believe that it's social security recipients

...who are bankruptcy the country, when in fact social security pays for itself and will continue to pay for itself well past 2047. The real culprit has been the Bush $1.8 trillion dollar tax cut, the Bush engineered recession and exportation of jobs and manufacturing, the lack of a foreign oil independent energy policy, a do nothing to develop job skills and education and the endless Bush Wars, just to name some of the Bush failures.

[despairing optimist]

14. Question not just the cost but also the legality of excluding people

from attending the forums based only on the possibility that they may cause a disturbance or may voice their disagreement with the * party line or may get to ask a question that hasn't been screened. If public funds are used in such a self-serving fashion, ACLU should seek an injunction against * and his road show until inequities are corrected.

[struggle4progress]

15. kick

[damntexdem]

16. Hey, they're Republicans ...

they're above the law.