Monday, November 14, 2011

How the rich created the Social Security “crisis” The Bush tax cuts coupled with a decades-long smear campaign are the real threat to the successful program By Gene Lyons / Salon


Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 5:00 PM 23:32:12 PST

How the rich created the Social Security “crisis”

The Bush tax cuts coupled with a decades-long smear campaign are the real threat to the successful program

lyons4

Now and then, George W. Bush told the unvarnished truth—most often in jest. Consider the GOP presidential nominee’s Oct. 20, 2000, speech at a high-society $800-a-plate fundraiser at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria. Resplendent in a black tailcoat, waistcoat and white bow tie, Bush greeted the swells with evident satisfaction.
“This is an impressive crowd,” he said. “The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base.”
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Eight months later, President Bush delivered sweeping tax cuts to that patrician base. Given current hysteria over what a recent Washington Post article called “the runaway national debt,” it requires an act of historical memory to recall that the Bush administration rationalized reducing taxes on inherited wealth because paying down the debt too soon might roil financial markets.
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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons

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