So Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid, Tom Daschle’s successor, turns out to be an amalgamation of Tom Daschle and John Kerry. There isn’t a winning combination of any of these democrat politicos, although they try.
On judicial nominations, Senator Reid, in 2001, said that every judicial nominee should get an up or down vote in the judiciary committee and the senate. We all know what an obstructionist Tom Daschle was on judicial nominees, which is why he’s living high on his retirement benefits we pay for. It’s cheaper for us this way than if he were still in Washington. Now however, Harry Reid has voted NO on cloture votes in the judiciary committee, ie. to deny an up or down vote in the committee as well as the senate, on Pryor, Estrada, Brown, and several others. He was for the normal judicial nominee processes before he was against it.
On saving Social Security, Sen. Harry Reid in 1999, was an advocate of private investment accounts as part of Social Security reform. This was when Bill Clinton first pointed out the problem Social Security faces when it comes time for the baby boomers to retire. At that time you didn’t hear anybody, republican or democrat, disputing the fact that there was a looming problem for Social Security, that the present system was headed for insolvency. No one disputed that, although the ‘when’ this would happen would differ, but the end result was the same. Here again, Senator Reid was for private citizens to hold a small percentage of what would be their taxes to be invested in private and public sector money market accounts that they own. Historically, these investments pay from 2 to 8 times the return that SS historically contributes. He saw the wisdom in this plan 6 years ago. Now however, he says there is no problem in Social Security that raising taxes won’t fix. I guess you can say he was for private investment accounts before he was against them.
We are left to wonder why a few years ago when a democrat was in the White House that the problem was perceived to be real, why they now think not only that there is no problem but that private investment accounts will kill Social Security instead of saving it? The fact that a republican is in the White House now seems to have changed the way they see Social Security. It’s purely political, which should now be obvious.
Another obvious conclusion one can draw is that, it isn’t the peoples’ welfare they are seeking to preserve, but rather the inadequate and antiquated Social Security system itself.
