They Have No New Ideas

Senator Obama has offered a solution to the Social Security Fund crisis, I read recently. It is unique and brilliant. How could he have thought of it so swiftly? (I write this while biting my tongue!)

The plan has two features: Increase the base taxed and raise the rate charged.

What else can government do but find a taxable item and levy a tax on it! My goodness! Never would the liberals allow private enterprise to get a foothold in a government program. And, doubly sure, they would not let President Bush get any credit for solving the problem.

Not that their plan has not been done before. Back in the late 1970s it was projected that the Fund would go bust in a not-too-far-distant future, so a committee was set up to investigate how to solve the problem. Idaho's Democrat Senator Frank Church was on the Committee. They worked real hard and came up with the brilliant plan to raise the base and increase the rate of tax! Can you imagine that!

About five years later: oops! The committee had miscalculated and another solution had to be determined, so another committee was organized. After much mental effort and investigation, the grand solution came forth: raise the base and increase the tax rate--again! But, again, what can government do, for it has no money-making ability of its own. Just spending yours and mine, that's all.

And you can bet your bottom--and last--dollar that the funds collected through Senator Obama's plan, were he to win the presidency, would all be spent right along with all the other taxes collected, showing up as reduction in the deficit. And, no set aside of Social Security Trust Funds like so many older Americans seem to think is being done--because that's what the politicians tell us.

Gene Lawley