Social Security Bushit: Bush is mistaken about the instability of Social Security, writes Dave Hage in today's Star Tribune:

Scare tactics . . . worked three years ago, when the administration was trying to sell voters on a preemptive war in Iraq. That's because most Americans simply didn't have the facts to evaluate Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein.

With Social Security, however, we have very good information and it completely contradicts the White House crisis scenario. Social Security is running very large surpluses at the moment and it will have enough money to pay full benefits until the year 2042. By then the median baby boomer will be 20 years into retirement. After that, it will still have funds to pay about 70 percent of promised benefits. This isn't liberal propaganda. It's from the annual report of the Social Security trustees, several of them Bush appointees. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan and trusted forecasting agency, says Social Security will be able to pay more like 80 percent of promised benefits long after 2050.

This is not a system that will be "flat broke" when today's 20-somethings retire.

Full article.

SS Fearmonger: Also on the Strib editorial page:

Of all the lies -- let's call them by their right name -- that the Bush administration is spreading about Social Security, none is as vile as the canard Bush repeated last Tuesday, when he said, "African-American males die sooner than other males do, which means the [Social Security] system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. And that needs to be fixed." That is an entirely phony assertion... For them to repeat what they know to be a blatant lie is despicable fear-mongering.