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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Smith who wrote (112897)	5/7/2005 2:31:27 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793838

What you seem to be saying is that there is one party (Republicans) that are interesting in addressing the issue, even though the easier path would be to ignore it and leave the problem to others at a later date, and other party (Democrats) that are just interested in trying to score points for themselves even if the problem does not get fixed. I think that's a bit too stark an assessment. Bush deserves credit for teeing it up. Score one for Bush. Beyond that, I can't award points to either side. It looked like all partisanship on both sides to me. Bush cranked up the campaign offering a carrot, the private account, and hiding the stick, the benefit cuts, thus passing off the carrot as the solution to the solvency problem, which it is not. I imagine he expected to get momentum from the carrot and then he's slip in the stick. But the carrot wasn't as much of a hit as he expected so he didn't get his momentum so he was forced either to introduce the stick or give up the effort. Naturally, he wants Dem cover on the stick. Had he taken the approach of putting together some sort of bipartisan commission, he might have gotten a bipartisan proposal. But his "mandate" lead him to try for the big partisan win. After that it was all partisanship and I don't think you can blame the Dems for doing the statesmanlike thing when it means bailing his partisan mandate out. They are willing to ignore the interests of multiple generations under the age of 40. Not necessarily. The Republicans can pass this without the Dems raising a finger. The Dems know they have no way to block it. So the youngsters can get what they want regardless.