[Mb-civic] EDITORIAL Bush 2.0 - LATimes

[Michael Butler]

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-bush1may01.story
EDITORIAL
Bush 2.0

May 1, 2005

It seems like just yesterday that George W. Bush was bragging about all the
political chips he'd accumulated on Nov. 2, and about how he was going to go
about spending them. But in holding the first prime-time news conference of
his second term on Thursday, just shy of its 100-day mark, the president was
remarkably subdued. He came across as humble even, maybe on account of his
plunging approval ratings. Or maybe it was because NBC made the president of
the United States defer to "The Apprentice" and change the time of the
conference.

Bush has been traveling the country for weeks like a wild-eyed prophet of
Social Security doom, pitching his private accounts as salvation. The more
he talks, the less popular his proposals have become. Obsessing about a
distant crisis (the eventual shortfall facing the Social Security system)
and linking it to a fake solution (those private accounts) have made Bush
seem adrift. This is odd when you consider that Bush is the first president
since Lyndon B. Johnson to have his party in command of both houses of
Congress at the start of his second term.

The Republican Congress is making its way down its golden-oldies wish list ‹
like tort reform and the recent changes in bankruptcy law ‹ but Bush looks
increasingly like a bystander. Bush claims to want to overhaul immigration
policy, passionately, but the White House is not leading on the issue. Bush
was a hapless observer recently as the Senate filibustered a sensible
bipartisan bill that would address the status of undocumented agricultural
workers.

On Social Security, last week's news conference was all about bringing the
wild-eyed prophet back from the wilderness, reviving the debate and
reinserting Bush at its center. And here Democrats should be careful not to
underestimate the president, who has proved in the past to be quite adept at
midcourse adjustment. It's still a long shot, admittedly, but it wouldn't be
out of character for Bush to pull off a fundamental change in Social
Security that shores up the system's finances, even though he first latched
onto the peripheral private accounts issue.

The president hinted at a significant adjustment when he raised the idea of
embracing "progressive indexing." The idea is to link the growth of benefits
owed to higher- income retirees to inflation, while keeping the benefits
owed to lower-income retirees indexed to wage growth, which is usually
greater. Bush, who likes saying that being president is hard work but rarely
acknowledges that it entails tough choices, was, for once, talking about
possible solutions to the real problem.

Another measure of Bush's sincerity will be his willingness to raise the cap
on the amount of wages ‹ currently $90,000 ‹ subject to the payroll tax. The
president was careful to say he was willing to look at any "good-faith
proposal that does not raise the payroll tax rate" ‹ words that leave open
the possibility of applying the same rate to more of an individual's wages.

Such a move could ensure Social Security's solvency for generations to come,
and maybe even pay for some contribution to his beloved private accounts.


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