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Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Bush on Social Security. It's Impeachable. Yes, Really.
So, yesterday in West Virginia, President Bush visits the Bureau of Public Debt for a photo op, to see the cabinet where they keep the paper IOUs for the Treasury notes that have been given by the Government in exchange for borrowing from the Social Security trust fund for use in the general revenue expenditures. And here's what Bush said about those IOUs, that government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury to replace the money taken from this government pension program:
I have just come from the Bureau of Public Debt. I want to thank Van Zeck,
Keith Rake, and Susan Chapman. Susan was the tour guide there at the Bureau of
Public Debt. I went there because I'm trying to make a point about the Social
Security trust. You see, a lot of people in America think there's a trust, in
this sense -- that we take your money through payroll taxes and then we hold it
for you, and then when you retire, we give it back to you. But that's not the
way it works.
There is no "trust fund," just IOUs that I saw firsthand,
that future generations will pay -- will pay for either in higher taxes, or
reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs. The
office here in Parkersburg stores those IOUs. They're stacked in a filing
cabinet. Imagine -- the retirement security for future generations is sitting in
a filing cabinet.
So Bush is saying that a U.S. Treasury bond is just a worthless IOU? One that foreign countries, like China, have heavily invested in? Wow, that has pretty serious economic consequences.
And, so it appears, pretty serious political ones as well. What Bush said almost certainly is impeachable under any fair reading of the Constitution. As Josh Marshall has already pointed out, here's a little known section of the 14th Amendment, Section 4:
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States,
authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Yes, the section even refers to "pensions" directly by name!
Didn't Bush take an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution of the United States? Sure looks like he violated that oath.
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