It's been, what, 2 1/2 months since the Impeachment affair has come and gone. We were told that the Senate needed to acquit the President because they needed to get back to doing the people's business. The biggest piece of business at hand was "saving" Social Security. I wonder how that's going...
Say you're the President of the United States. You molested an intern a couple of years ago and you're just now getting caught. After vilifying your accusers and getting the public to focus on the sex and not the fact you lied your ass off, you downplay the proceedings. You are formally impeached by the House of Representatives, the first time it's happened this century. You figure the best way to sway public opinion is to claim you've forgiven yourself. You decide to attack the matter on many fronts.
"I didn't do it." "Even though I did do it, it's not impeachable.""Even though it's impeachable, Ken Star shouldn't have been investigating me.""Even though I should be investigated, I didn't lie.""Even though I did lie, it's only about sex.""Even though it's just about sex, the public doesn't care.""Even though the public cares, you can't get rid of me. We've got too much
work to do to save the future of this country.""Even though we don't have too much work to do, this whole affair is strictly
partisan.""Even though the only people being partisan are on my side, only people who aren't
idiots will agree with me.""Besides, I didn't do it."(I hate to criticize those who bought these lines, but once it's written in one place, it's pretty easy to figure out that his whole defense was a bunch of crap.)
You threaten every Senator in your party to vote on your side. Eventually, the vote comes up and you squeak by without a majority of votes. You feel vindicated. You now try to live up to your promises to try to build up your good will with the American people after having dragged the country through the muck. What do you do?
You start a war in some isolated part of the world that America could give a rat's ass about.
I'm not here to debate whether or not we should be fighting this war. (That was two weeks ago.) I'm merely here to point out that the promised salvation of Social Security will never happen because, as we now know, Clinton only said it in order to influence the Impeachment vote.
Will Social Security ever be saved? It depends on your definition. Even if the proposed changes take place, it only "fixes" the system for the next 40 years or so. (And Alan Greenspan, the sole reason Clinton is still in office, says that those fixes are 1. illegal and 2. won't work) A generation later, our children will still be facing a crisis that has no good answers. Now that we've got a budget surplus, we need to figure out a way to phase the program out. The Social Security System is a financial black hole that was a somewhat acceptable program when once implemented but has grown into a monster. The day Social Security is reformed, or done away with, is Day One of Civil War II: Judgement Day.
I have this argument with my mom and grandparents about once a week: For the good of the country, we need to figure out a way to wean the country off of the government so all these cataclysmic events will not come to pass. I'm convinced the program needs to go. They swear that it's a good system that only needs minor tweaking. I remind them that they only feel that way because they're older and that they are now or are fixing to receive benefits from the program. They tell me to shut up and go to my room.
So we're back to the original question. "Is Social Security saved yet?" Nope, just an empty promise meant to distract us from Clinton's dalliances. "Will it ever get saved?" Probably not. And that'll mean the end of the country.
And you thought Y2K was going to be hairy.