Starving the Beast & Jabbing the Spear

I'm not really smart enough to comment on the whole Social Security debacle. So this will probably be my first and last post about it.

But Paul Krugman really puts it together nicely here:

President Bush isn’t trying to reform Social Security. He isn’t even trying to “partially privatize” it. His plan is, in essence, to dismantle the program, replacing it with a system that may be social but doesn’t provide security. And the goal, as with his tax cuts, is to undermine the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt.

Why do I say that the Bush plan would dismantle Social Security? Because for Americans who entered the work force after the plan went into effect and who chose to open private accounts, guaranteed benefits - income you receive after retirement even if everything else goes wrong - would be nearly eliminated ... The attempt to “jab a spear” through Social Security complements the strategy of “starve the beast,” long advocated by right-wing intellectuals: cut taxes, then use the resulting deficits as an excuse for cuts in social spending. The spearing doesn’t seem to be going too well at the moment, but the starving was on full display in the budget released yesterday.

Thanks to the Al Franken Show blog for pointing that out. But I'm sure DHP already had a 1,000 word essay ready to go based on Krugman's article...