Reasons Change, Goals Remain the Same

As Kevin Drum and others (Atrios and Josh Marshall) point out, the Bush administration is now candidly admitting that their Social Security plan will do nothing to solve the manufactured crisis that they've been hyping in recent weeks:

"In a significant shift in his rationale for the accounts, Bush dropped his claim that they would help solve Social Security's fiscal problems — a link he sometimes made during last year's presidential campaign. Instead, he said the individual accounts were desirable because they would be "a better deal," providing workers what he said would be a higher rate of return and "greater security in retirement."

A Bush aide, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, was more explicit, saying that the individual accounts would do nothing to solve the system's long-term financial problems."

This is a recurring pattern with the Bush administration: Manufacture a crisis in order to scare people into jumping on their bandwagon to do what the administration wanted to do, anyway (cut taxes, invade Iraq, privatize Social Security). If the facts later turn out not to support their claims that there was a crisis, they just invent other reasons for doing it. With this administration, decisions are always firm, while the facts supporting those decisions shift with the wind.