…before my browser crashes. And rather than add to the 20 draft articles I have, I might as well get these over with:
* Ted Rall notes in a recent cartoon that GWB said Social Security would go bankrupt in ten years without privatization… while running for Congress in 1978. Can any of my savvy blog readers find any attribution to this? Don’t worry, you don’t have to explain how it’s lasted for 16 years longer than anticipated and counting…
Damn, the rest of them are on the laptop and I don’t feel like retyping links. Here’s hoping this lasts…
Glenn, I’m not sure how valid this is, but the comment appears at http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/midland.html in an article called “A Shrub Grows in Midland” by Karen Olsson for The Texas Observer.
Quoting the relevant portion of the article
According to Gary Ott, who was then a reporter for the Plainview Daily Herald, Bush stopped by the paper�s little office �maybe five or six times. He�d sit down at my desk; he was a fun guy. He was very outgoing, very friendly, and we would argue politics since I was a liberal. We�d argue over Carter policies.� Bush criticized energy policy, federal land use policy, subsidized housing, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (�a misuse of power,� he said), and he warned that Social Security would go bust in ten years unless people were given a chance to invest the money themselves. None of this really distinguished him from Hance, though, so in the end Bush simply argued that a Republican could better represent the district: �If you want a chance in the way Congress has been run, send someone who will be independent from those who will run the Congress.�
I’m still looking to see if there’s any proof that Dubya made the exact comment about Social Security in a reported campaign speech, though if he didn’t really have any significant campaign point differences with his opponent, there may be no definite smoking gun.
Man, I Googled the living heck out of it, but I sure can’t find it…the Internet’s a big place, though. Best of luck!
I read about it just recently in one of my progressive blogs, but I can’t seem to locate it again. I’ll keep trying to find the reference.