Smoke and Mirrors Might Work with Social Security

Jack Kemp discusses the latest victory for President Bush on Social Security, despite the fact that the media has almost entirely ignored it. Several Republican leaders in both the Senate and the House are going to introduce legislation that would allow for today's "surplus" Social Security funds to be invested in individual accounts, thus stopping the raid for general government revenue.

This tactic is obviously just a game of smoke and mirrors, but since the government can successfully keep an unfunded liability off its books, why not an asset to fund that liability? At last, the bill would bring the unfunded liability question to the forefront in Congress and the "transition cost" issue and other empty arguments will fall apart.

As Ankle Biting Pundits suggests, it is politically extremely difficult to be in favor of continuing to raid the Social Security surpluses to fund general revenue. Nancy Pelosi, who explicitly favors raiding the fund, is simply clueless.

Truly a brilliant GOP strategy.