RUSH: From the San Francisco Chronicle today, interesting story. Headline… Let me just say the headline: “Social Security Rehab…” (laughing) Rehab. Rehabilitation. “Social Security Rehab Died First Under Clinton; Lewinsky Scandal, Impeachment Ended His Overhaul Attempt — Who killed Social Security overhaul? A) Harry Reid, B) George W. Bush, C) the AARP or D) Monica Lewinsky? Answer is D, Monica Lewinsky. Seven years ago, the first baby boomer president traveled the country to warn that his generation’s impending retirement, 76 million people [who think the world revolves around them] would bankrupt the generations to follow. ‘It would be unconscionable if we failed to act,’ President Clinton said at a forum in 1998 when he made fixing the nation’s retirement program a top priority in his second term. Clinton’s efforts then, in light of President Bush’s now, induce an extraordinary sense of d?j? vu. Clinton appointed a bipartisan commission which delivered in ’97 three options to save the program. They included a now familiar list of possible benefit cuts from changing indexing formulas to changing the retirement age, and one of the options would have allowed workers to divert five percentage points of their payroll taxes to personal accounts, the first such proposal by a government commission. Clinton started campaigning for changes without saying what he endorsed. ‘I don’t want to dodge any of that,’ he said. ‘but if I advocate a specific plan right now, then all the debate will be about that. First thing we gotta do is get the American people solidly lined up behind change.’
The Republicans did not filibuster this; they did not obstruct this. They went to the bipartisan meetings at the White House, and they were all for fixing Social Security, because it needs to be fixed. “‘We got real opportunity here, and a rare one,’ said Clinton, ‘to act today to provide for our children’s tomorrows,’ but at a press conference that day the questions focused on Ken Starr, the independent counsel whose report on Clinton’s relations with Monica Lewinsky would soon lead to impeachment.” Now, how many of you remember any of this? I’ll bet (interruption). No, no, not Monica. I mean how many of you remember (laughing). H.R. said, “I do.” Starr Report, yeah. Have you read the Starr Report, by the way? Have you read the Starr Report? It’s the most amazing thing, sitting there reading the Starr Report. It is just amazing. But anyway. How many of you remember that we were this close to this bipartisan — well, I don’t remember it being that close. It never really got that close because of impeachment but they were talking, as opposed to what’s happening today. The Republicans did not go out, start running commercials opposed it. The Republicans did not go out and trash Clinton’s saying he was trying to do something filled with chicanery. They recognized that it was a problem that needed to be fixed as well. Only today, when the Democrats are in full obstruction mode, are they actually now opposed to what their favorite president in history next to FDR actually proposed in 1998, and Clinton’s proposal, 5% of your payroll taxes go to your own private account. Bush’s number they’re throwing around is 4%. Bush then had his own commission too and it was headed up by a Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
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RUSH: Here’s Sylvia in Richmond, Virginia, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush, for taking my call from lovely Richmond, Virginia.
RUSH: Thank yew.
CALLER: A quick comment, and then a question.
RUSH: Yes, ma’am.
CALLER: I know the Democrats are not going to come to the table as long as privatization is there. I haven’t heard any serious discussion on raising the FICA cap. Why can’t it be raised on 125 or 150? I would pay anything. I’m so thankful to be an American, I do not mind paying my taxes.
RUSH: (sighs)
CALLER: So why doesn’t Social Security — why can’t we fix the problem with raising it from 90 say to 125 or 150?
RUSH: Uhh, where do I begin?
RUSH: Well, the first thing people have proposed it. The current cap is 90.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: On income, people have proposed it, and it — you know, it’s something that’s marginally still on the table, somebody have rejected it, but no idea has been totally — well somebody may have said that idea is a nonstarter. Nobody wants to raise taxes right now. This is not the way to do this. The problem is not simply the lack of funds. The problem is the solvency of the program and this never-ending cycle of people who are not collecting the money paying for it. The idea of Social Security reform is to actually create circumstances where people who retire are retiring on their own savings, on their own money, not the taxes collected from younger workers who are being forced to pay an ever-higher and higher burden. The answer to this problem is not raising taxes. That what we’ve done each and every time down the pike. It hadn’t worked.
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RUSH: It’s so sad and unfortunate Sylvia from beautiful Richmond, Virginia could not hang on for her second question because her plumber showed up and so the plumber showed up; she had to go. I don’t know what her second question was, but she was a good American she said…and of course I don’t know how old Sylvia was, but it’s interesting. The solution to every problem is raise taxes. The federal government’s bigger than it ever is. I still have a George Will column over the weekend in which he echoed an education idea from some governor, local legislator somewhere, I forget where it was but it’s called the 65% solution, and the education proposal basically is this: You take all the money that’s being spent on education now, you don’t increase it at all.You just reallocate it. You just require that 65% of all money spent on education be spent in the classroom — meaning on teachers, filmstrips, whatever is in the classroom, the students, this sort of thing. Right now there are only three or four states that spend that much. The national average is like 61 or 62-1/2%. So if you increase the 62-1/2% allocation to 65, do you know how much money you’re talking about? Stand back, folks: $14 billion!
To give you an idea how much money we’re spending on education and these liberals run around, they say, “We’re not spending enough. Education is, oh, woe is us.” The only problem with education is the curriculum. The only problem with public education is who’s in charge of it. The fact that we’re not spending enough money is just a crock. But it’s an interesting number, if you just take that 62-1/2% or whatever it is percent and make it 65%, allocate 65% of all education dollars, and that seems — 35% that means will be going to administration, whatever else, but if you just increase it 62-1/2 to 65% you find $14 billion to spend on education without raising taxes, without increasing the budget whatsoever — and so I had that in mind answering her question about Social Security. Everybody thinks that the answer’s always more money, and I think they think of that because of solvency. But the real problem in Social Security is that we’re past the point now where people’s contributions — taxes, what have you — over the course of their lives pay for their retirement. They don’t! People are not paying for their own retirement on Social Security. Other people are.
What stymied Clinton was the Lewinsky scandal got in the way, but he had basically the same plan. Clinton’s plan was to take 5% and invest it. The difference was this. Clinton’s 5% that would so-called be invested would not be owned by Social Security donors or the American people. The government would invest 5% of Social Security revenue, and did anybody say, “Oh, Wall Street, you can’t have that (clucking) Wall Street?” Who would benefit from this? People like Robert Rubin, Clinton’s old buddies from Goldman Sachs, Jon Corzine and all these people. They would benefit from that. There was one voice who said you can’t do that, and it was Greenspan. Greenspan said, “Whoa, we got all kinds of problems now if you take that 5% and the government starts investing that? No, no, no, no.” So it was Greenspan that shut that down, but still Clinton was talking about taking 5% out of Social Security and putting it in the private sector in government plans, not individual plans, but the whole point nevertheless is to eventually get to a point where all Social Security retirees are retiring on their own money. (sigh) So you could say, folks, that Monica blew it. Republicans were supporting it. the Republicans were participating in the bipartisan meetings to get this going then Monica the whole thing broke, came along and she blew it. She didn’t even blow it for Clinton, she blew it for the whole baby boom generation, she blew it for Generation X, she blew it for Generation Y, whatever other generations have been named out there, and it’s just one of these modern American tragedies. It just goes to show that when you engage activity with one other person, you think it’s not going to affect others, it always does — and when Monica blew it, untold millions, folks (sigh) were affected, felt it, what have you.
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