Just POlitics

Social Security: both parties in trouble

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds that both parties are viewed skeptically on the issue of Social Security. Sixty-two percent worry that Republicans will "go too far" in changing Social Security; 61% worry that Democrats "will not go far enough."

·        Americans agree major changes are needed in Social Security: 45% say they should be made in the next year or two; 36% say within the decade.

·        Nearly two-thirds, 62%, say fixing Social Security will mean benefit cuts or tax increases. If they had to choose, 53% would choose higher taxes, 38% lower benefits.

·        Bush's proposal to allow workers to divert some of their payroll taxes to individual investment accounts was supported by 44%, opposed by 52%. That's slightly better than in a survey in April but slightly worse than one in March.

E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post tells Democrats to get away from the table. He warns Democrats they are about to be sucked into the Bush machine and made to look stupid:

In the old days, when each house produced different versions of the same bill, a "conference" committee typically including members of both parties from both houses would thrash out the details and reach a compromise. Now the Republicans will concede whatever is necessary to get a bill out of the Senate, even as the lockstep-Republican House produces a right-wing version of the same proposal. In conferences, Republicans routinely freeze out all but the most pliable Democrats. The supposed "compromise" that emerges is not a compromise at all. Democrats who go along become enablers of a game being played with a stacked deck.

Senator Charles Grassley, who chairs the Senate committee charged with writing the Social Security fix-it bill, on the other hand said that President Bush should keep quiet on Social Security at a town hall meeting in Webster City, Iowa. He offered the comments because “all Democrats are going to do is take shots at the President.”

"This," Grassley said, “makes it harder for me to build a bill from the ground up.”

The President is not being quite today. He is in Canton, Mis. where he will speak at on Social Security at a Nissan plant. Gov. Haley Barbour will be in attendance.

Who’s governor of Washington?

A judge in Washington State agreed that Republicans could use proportional analysis to prove that illegal votes cast would have changed the outcome of who was elected Governor of Washington state.

If 10 illegal votes came from a precinct that voted 60 percent for Gov. Christine Gregoire and 40 percent for Republican Dino Rossi, six votes would be deducted from Gregoire's total and four from Rossi's.

Democrats have been collecting evidence of illegal votes in Republican-leaning counties, and plan to use the same proportional analysis in court to challenge Republicans.

Gregoire won by 129 votes in a hand recount of 2.9 million ballots. Republicans have identified more than 1,000 illegal votes —cast by felons, but also unverified provisional ballots and votes cast in the names of dead people.

How many filibusters?

The Washington Times "Inside Politics" offers a report on the distortion of facts by Democrats as to how many real filibusters there have been in the past:

The Committee for Justice, which defends and promotes what it calls constitutionalist judicial nominees, said yesterday that Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, falsely suggested that there have been 35 filibusters of executive branch nominees between 1949 and 2002, including 17 for judgeships. PFAW says there were 30, including 13 judicial nominations.
In fact, there was only one case of a filibuster — President Lyndon Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas to be chief justice — the conservative group said.

Mr. Reid and the liberal group came up with their numbers by including cases where opponents of a nominee were unable to mount a filibuster — the Senate voted to end debate.
The Committee for Justice cited language from the Congressional Research Service report that it would be "incorrect," "erroneous" and a "misuse" of CRS data to equate cloture attempts with actual filibusters.