To Gerry Shea: Can you defend the Clinton Plan?

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

Gerry Shea wrote:
>
> The most important step to strengthen retirement security for working
> families would be for the President and Congress to enact legislation
> devoting 62% of the federal budget surplus, both Social Security and
> non-Social Security, to strengthen Social Security (and another 15% for
> Medicare).
>
  You state that devoting 62% of the surplus to Social Security is the
most important step yet you seem totally unwilling to defend this policy
against its critics.  As I said in my previous note of the same subject,
Clinton's proposal is functionally equivalent to writing Social Security
a check that is to be honored by future taxpayers.  Those taxpayers are
already on the hook to pay off the the bonds that Social Security is
projected to start cashing in in 2014.  His proposal is to give Social
Security an additional gift of bonds to start cashing in in 2034, when
the original bonds are projected to run out.  This is effectively setting
tax policies for the next generation, something we have no right to do.
Do you dispute this?

  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.  This is what is mandated by current law.  What we should not do
is implement a plan so flawed that nobody seems willing to stand up and
defend it.

Reed Davis