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 déjà 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.'
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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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