To Gerry Shea: Can you defend the Clinton Plan?

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

Gerry Shea wrote:
>
>       The President's plan, by contrast, transfers 62% of surpluses to
> the Social Security trust funds over a 15-year period when sufficient
> surpluses are expected to be available.  This would be done in a way
> that yields a very substantial reduction in debt held by the public.
>
  In fact, the public debt will be HIGHER under Clinton's plan than it
will be under current law.  This is supported by Clinton's own numbers from
the latest U.S. Budget (see http://people.delphi.com/rd100/ssreform.html ).
The reason that it will be higher is that, under current law, all of the
surplus is to be used to pay down the public debt.  Instead of paying down
the public debt directly, however, Clinton proposes to give the money to
Social Security, borrow it back, and then pay down the public debt.  The
only thing this accomplishes is increasing the government's debt to Social
Security.  That is why I say that his 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.

  So I ask you again, can you defend Clinton's proposal?  More precisely,
can you dispute anything I stated in the above paragraph?  Between the
Clinton Plan, the Archer/Shaw Plan, and current law, the latter is the most
responsible action.  If we cannot bring ourselves to change Social Security
in any way that would lower its costs, we can at least pay down the public
debt so that we will be in better financial state to deal with the problem
in the future.  What we should NOT do is commit future tax monies to Social
Security.  That is effectively deciding tax policies for the next generation,
something we have no right to do.  Do you dispute this?

Reed Davis