Outrageous Bush Social Security Lie

[petardier]

I was listening to NPR yesterday when they reported on Bush's trip in support of his Social Security agenda. They played a clip of Bush saying something like this:

"Young people today have a better chance of seeing a UFO than they do of seeing a Social Security check"

I'm quoting from memory, so I may not be word-perfect on that. I'll try to get the exact quote for you later.

This is scarcely his first lie about Social Security, but it is a whopper. As things stand, if nothing is done about Social Security, SS check will have to be reduced by something between 20 to 30 percent. That would happen somewhere between 2042 and 2052, depending on what estimate you're looking at. And that's only if we don't do something to fix system. Even inaction sounds way better than Bush's privatization "fix" which does nothing to find funds or reduce benefits. Those are the real choices once the smoke and mirrors are swept away.

Comments

[psongster.livejournal.com]

"Young people today have a better chance of seeing a UFO than they do of seeing a Social Security check"


This meme started years ago. At the time it was "Young people *think* they have..."

Someone compared survey results to questions along the lines of "Do you think you might see a UFO sometime in your lifetime?" and "Do you expect Social Security to still exist when you retire?" The questions were not originally included in the same survey. But this "fact" has been used in political arguments ever since.

So maybe you misheard Bush and he included the "think" equivocation.

Or maybe survey results, however suspect to begin with, have morphed into Truth.