Saturday, March 12, 2005

What Constitution?

The following quote from Mr. Bush taken directly from the Whitehouse transcript is very telling...
"Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund -- in other words, there's a pile of money being accumulated. That's just simply not true. The money -- payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They're spent on benefits and they're spent on government programs. There is no trust. We're on the ultimate pay-as-you-go system -- what goes in comes out. And so, starting in 2018, what's going in -- what's coming out is greater than what's going in. It says we've got a problem. And we'd better start dealing with it now. The longer we wait, the harder it is to fix the problem."


Bush is basically telling us that he is going to default on the Social Security Trust Fund. This trust fund was specifically created at the urging of Mr. Greenspan to specifically address the upcoming situation where SS income will be overtaken by expenses.
As Josh Marshall points out this is very close, if not blatantly flaunting his oath of office where he promises to uphold the Constitution. There is the sticky little article about government debt. The 15th Amendement, Section 4 reads:
"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

Can someone tell me why this statement has not caused outrage? I am stuck in France and only have access to CNN International but I would have thought that this kind of baldfaced lie would have received some kinds of MSM coverage. Do people not remember Greenspan's statements back in 1983 that recommended the intentional creation of a surplus in the Social Security collections?
How have we fallen so far? I sincerely think this is grounds for impeachment.

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