The worm is still turning on this issue, but it doesn't appear that Bush Little (the CRISIS is coming! the CRISIS is coming) has the votes to end Social Security as we know it. Whether democrats will retain their spinal cartridge (almost backbone, but not quite) on this issue is also unknown, but we can remain hopeful.
What remains largely undiscussed, however, is the class dimension of this issue. When those two champions of the working-class, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan, cooked up this reform of social security in 1983, payroll taxes (disproportionately paid by the working-class) were increased to set up the trust fund, which would invest the excess in treasury notes to create the "surplus," looking forward to the time when there would be more retirees than contributors to SS. This has allowed the federal government to maintain the lowest income tax (paid, disproportionately, by plutocrats) in the industrialized world. Kevin Drum, in the Christian Science Monitor, has the details here.
The proposed Stockbroker Welfare Act of 2005, on the heals of the Big Pharma Welfare Act of 2004, once again demonstrates Bush's contempt for workers in the United States.
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