Bush Will Go After Social Security Again

I've been hearing on news reports that Bush plans to start attacking social security again. Bradford Plummer on MoJo blog explains why this year may be Bush's last chance to try to destroy social security:

Basically, the Social Security Trustees have been consistently predicting low productivity growth over the past four years, which has in turn helped them write annual reports that predict massive actuarial imbalances for the program 30 years down the line. Happily, though, here in the real world we've had very high productivity growth over the past four years, which suggests that the long-term outlook for Social Security is in reality much better than the Trustees' "Intermediate Cost" projections imply. (And the administration knows this—in fact, the FY2006 budget predicted much rosier growth numbers for the future than even the Social Security Trustees' most optimistic numbers.)

At some point, and probably as soon as next year, the Trustees' will have no choice but to revise their projections to reflect the robust growth we've actually had. When that time comes, the public will be able to see very clearly that the long-term outlook is better than we've been led to believe and Social Security is not, in fact, in the throes of a crisis requiring drastic measures or privatization. The alarmists will all be exposed come 2006 or so, and it really is Custer's Last Stand right now.

Watch for a big, last-ditch effort on the part of the Bushites, Senator Grassley, et al.