Little Miss Atilla On Immigration

With a name like that you might think her solution is to just unleash her Mongol hordes, but in actuallity she has two posts on the topic that I think have some very good points. In the first post Atilla Girl lists three points, ...1) secure the border; 2) streamline the legal immigration system for those who truly want to come here ...

Bruce Bartlett: Bush Is An Imposter

No, not body snatcher imposter, but an imposter in terms of being a conservative. I have been feeling this way about Bush for quite some time now. Bush's first reaction to any problem is to turn toward government. Government is what has brought about the new jobs he has been bragging about (and frankly it ain't much ...

Upping the Retirement Age

GOP Senators May Make 69 Retirement Age (AP) WASHINGTON -- Key Senate Republicans are considering gradually raising the Social Security retirement age as high as 69 over several years as they struggle to jump-start legislation that President Bush has placed atop his second-term agenda, officials said Tuesday. ... The possible increase to 69 over two decades or more was among the ...

In the South, Partisan Voting Gets Stronger

In the South, Partisan Voting Gets Stronger (Roll Call, $) Are you ready for “premature partisan polarization”? No, it’s not a medical condition that can be treated by Cialis, as Republican pollster Rob Autry joked at a conference here on Southern politics earlier this week. Rather, it represents a shift that is already having a major effect on American elections. Surveys ...

Automatic Signup In 401(k)s Backed

Automatic Signup In 401(k)s Backed (WaPo, May 30, A5) House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) will include a provision in his Social Security legislation to help employers make enrollment in 401(k) plans automatic unless workers choose to opt out, according to congressional staff and knowledgeable lobbyists. The provision could have substantial impact on the nation's savings rate, which ...

Bush’s Secret Plan to Kill Social Security

Brad DeLong thinks the combination of progressivity and privatization offered by President Bush to fix Social Security is really a secret plan to kill it off. Pozen Pill - How Bush's version of "progressive indexing" would kill Social Security (Slate) This sounds like a not unreasonable way to keep Social Security healthy through most of the century. And progressive price indexing, by ...

Max Sawicky on Bush’s Program

While the Left are pretty much in agreement that Bush's plan sucks, they really seem to be scattered on why it is a mess. Max Sawicky's post on it says it is bad because Social Security is a public good. Frankly I find his arguments flacid. Public goods are goods where one's use of the good does ...

Don’t Cut the Benefits for the Rich Says Kevin Drum

No, really. Well at least don't cut them like Bush is suggesting. But that's not all there is to fairness. Most Americans also intuitively accept the idea that tax rates become unfair if they get too high, no matter how rich you are. They also think it's unfair to pay taxes and get nothing back. A common sense notion of ...

Kinsley: Bush Gets B+ for Honesty, Even Courage

Michael Kinsley, long a favorite of mine among liberal pundits, once again demonstrates why in his LAT editorial "Bush Gets B for Honesty, Even Courage, on Social Security." Bush's rebuff to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was superb. The people who oppose his judgeship nominees aren't prejudiced against religion, he said. They do it because they have a different "judicial ...

Pseudo-Progressivity

Matthew Yglesias claims that Krugman picks apart the "pseudo-progressivity" of the Bush Social Security plan. It is at moments like this that I have to wonder what in the heck he's got in his liqour cabinet because it must be good stuff and I want some. Seriously the cuts of the Bush plan are progressive: The more ...