Just Say 'No Ideas'

From IBD:
Posted 7/10/2006

Social Security: There they go again. Democrats are responding to President Bush's recent reform talk by trying to scare the oldsters and vowing to "protect" them by making sure nothing gets done.

When the president asked a couple of weeks ago for a new bipartisan effort to fix the nation's big entitlement programs, he probably knew what kind of answer he'd get. But he asked anyway.
Speaking to the Manhattan Institute think tank on June 27, he said: "Oh, I know this town is full of all kinds of politics, but we ought to set politics aside. We need to set politics aside when it comes to reforming Social Security and Medicare."

The response has been predictable and anything but bipartisan. Hearing those magic words "Social Security," leading Democrats have gone into their fear-mongering mode.

"Republicans continue their relentless quest to privatize Social Security," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., while Democrats are working to "strengthen" it.

Actually, the Democrats have no plan on the table to preserve Social Security and keep it from drifting toward big tax hikes and benefit cuts. That was made clear in 2005 when the president tried to sell Congress on a plan to let younger workers divert some of their Social Security taxes into private accounts. Rather than countering with their own ideas, the Democrats decided they had more to gain by sowing fear and confusion about the White House's ideas.

To judge from the Democrats' latest weekly radio address, that approach hasn't changed a bit since last year. Bruce Braley, running as the Democratic nominee to replace retiring Republican Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, took the now-familiar approach of singling out seniors while implying that their benefits are in danger.

Of course Braley couldn't flatly make that claim, as it is untrue. Instead, he dropped hints, noting that Iowa has "one of the highest percentages of seniors in the nation." He said the GOP "privatization" plan "terminates the guaranteed benefit for retiring seniors" (which it would do only for those retirees, well into the future, who trade the guaranteed benefit for private accounts).

Then there was the sales pitch to you-know-who: "When I get to Congress, I will join Democrats in fighting to keep our promise to seniors in Iowa and across this country when it comes to retirement security."

Rattling the elderly has worked before; Braley and fellow Democrats think it will work now. But Bush seems to disagree. That he chose to revive entitlement reform talk as the fall elections near might reflect encouraging poll data, or maybe just his own intuition that Americans are warming to the concept of private accounts.

Whatever the reason, he's still the man with the ideas, still looking for a Democrat willing to engage in constructive debate.