Can anyone out there defend the Clinton Plan?

[Reed Davis <rdavis2@ix.netcom.com>]

Gerry Shea wrote:
>
>         Bob is right that the forecasts for the economy and the budget
> are uncertain.  They always have been and always will be.  There are,
> however, several critical differences that distinguish the President's
> proposal from the plan recently put forward by Representatives Archer
> (R-TX) and Shaw (R-FL).   These differences emphasize that the
> President's plan is a responsible approach to assuring Social Security
> solvency.
>
  As I said in my previous message of May 5th (Current Party Proposals:
Make the Xers pay for it), Clinton's proposal is functionally equivalent
to writing Social Security a check that is to be honored by future
taxpayers starting in 2034.  The surplus is just used as a cover for this
postdated check.  Clinton's proposal will simply increase the government's
debt to Social Security by the government bonds that he proposes to give it.
This is supported by Clinton's own numbers from the latest U.S. Budget (see
http://people.delphi.com/rd100/ssreform.html ).

  I have made similar criticisms of Clinton's plan again and again and am
yet to run into anyone who will actively defend it.  I am beginning to think
that such a person does not exist.  I directed one to Representative Thurman
and the one on May 5th to Gerry Shea and got no response.  I likewise expect
no response to this one.

  To be fair, I suspect that the Archer/Shaw Social Security Guarantee Plan
likewise achieves its goals by increasing the debt.  I asked for the estimates
of its affect on the federal debt several times and got no response.  It does
seem that the most common response to a difficult question is no response.
It's fairly safe because one can always claim other reasons for not responding,
many of them valid.  You can only hope that people will begin to notice the
pattern of non-responses.  In any case, as long as I receive non-responses to
my criticisms of the Clinton and the Archer/Shaw Plan, I can only assume that
those criticisms are basically correct.

Reed Davis