"Overhauling"

An excellent point by Ezra Klein, namely that it's an enormous dodge for reporters to write that John McCain plans to balance the budgeting by "entitlement programs, including Social Security". Like, overhauling how. If McCain doesn't say how, he might as well be saying he plans to balance the budget by magic. If he does say how, well, some people will get upset but they ought to have their chance to get upset before the election.

This is part of the paradox of McCain's famous openness to the press -- the deal seems to be that in exchange for unusual access to the candidate, his traveling press corps agrees not to ask him any obvious questions like "when you put changing the federal government's largest program at the center of your economic strategy, what exactly do you mean?" You probably wouldn't get invited to the next BBQ session or something. But it's a kind of important aspect of the overall picture. Trying to cut Medicare spending is a more reasonable idea than Social Security cuts, but it's an even more conceptually difficult proposition and one really needs to know what kind of overhaul we're talking about before evaluating that kind of proposal.

Comments

It's particularly bizarre to propose to eliminate the deficit by 2013 by "fixing" Social Security, considering that Social Security will still be operating on a surplus at that date--the Social Security deficits everyone on the right is so concerned about don't kick in until about 2017.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html

Posted by rea | July 8, 2008 11:54 AM

no, they do ask. they just don't tell us the answers

Posted by cleek | July 8, 2008 11:57 AM

Hello:

One line of critique against McCain that I have yet to see exploited by Obama (and which in a way goes along with the comments above about asking for details) is the issue of why NOW does McCain have all these great ideas? He has been in Congress for 287 years and don't recall his caring about much of anything except restraining 1st amendment rights through 'campaign reform'.

This gets back to the notion of why governors make such great presidential candidates: 1) Its easier to run a State then a City; and 2) Anyone who has been in Congress a while tends to run up a lengthly voting record that can't help but have more then a few bad votes/flip-flops.

It seems that McCain should have a fairly long history of some really foolish votes (in retrospect anyway) and that the DNC should be hammering him on what he had done in the past vs. all the great ideas now.

Posted by Splotto | July 8, 2008 11:58 AM

It's the same pass Bush got when it was clear he had no clue how to be President, but the press granted that he would bring the "adults" with him to figure it out.

The entire paradigm is that "normal Americans" are white, rural/midwestern republicans, and everyone else is on the "fringe."

No matter that the vast majority of Americans favor every Obama position. Obama is clearly "liberal" and must "move to the center" where McCain already is because he's a "maverick."

Until we dismantle the broken traditional media apparatus, none of this will change. The Madlib is fixed, only the names change.

Posted by WinSmith | July 8, 2008 12:01 PM

Hello:

One line of critique against McCain that I have yet to see exploited by Obama (and which in a way goes along with the comments above about asking for details) is the issue of why NOW does McCain have all these great ideas? He has been in Congress for 287 years and don't recall his caring about much of anything except restraining 1st amendment rights through 'campaign reform'.

This gets back to the notion of why governors make such great presidential candidates: 1) Its easier to run a State then a City; and 2) Anyone who has been in Congress a while tends to run up a lengthly voting record that can't help but have more then a few bad votes/flip-flops.

It seems that McCain should have a fairly long history of some really foolish votes (in retrospect anyway) and that the DNC should be hammering him on what he had done in the past vs. all the great ideas now.

Posted by Splotto | July 8, 2008 12:02 PM

"Overhaul" is a particularly unfortunate dodge here because Social Security just doesn't have a lot of moving parts compared to something like, say, defense contracting or farm subsidies. The SSA pretty much writes checks and puts them in the mail, full stop. (Actually, since direct deposit became mandatory, they don't even do that anymore.)

In this context, unless McCain plans to cancel 2-for-1 Donut Fridays at the SSA cafeteria, it's pretty certain that "overhaul" means he intends to do something about the size of the checks that get written.

Posted by alkali | July 8, 2008 12:32 PM

"John McCain. Four more years of fuzzy math that heaps debt on our nation at an accelerating pace."

McCain talking about economics reminds me of the Emo Phillips line defining the lottery as a tax on people who are bad at math. In this case, more debt will be the tax and we'll be the ones who eventually have to pay for it.

Posted by LFC | July 8, 2008 12:43 PM

My car was running kinda rough last week so I overhauled it into a brick wall at 60 mph. Now the engine isn't making any noises at all!

Posted by Drew Steen | July 8, 2008 12:55 PM

What Alkali said,

There are two ways you can eliminate the defecit using SS, either raise the the payroll tax coming in or cut the benefits going out.

Which is it John?

Posted by eric k | July 8, 2008 12:59 PM

"But it's a kind of important aspect of the overall picture"

While its kind of important, open bar barbeques and backrubs are also important to me. I'm not that principled!

Posted by ml | July 8, 2008 1:01 PM

My car was running kinda rough last week so I overhauled it into a brick wall at 60 mph. Now the engine isn't making any noises at all!

Priceless, Drew. Just f***in' priceless.

Posted by LFC | July 8, 2008 1:19 PM

John McCain is the anointed next President of the United States.

Get used to it.

Trust me, Obama doesn't have a chance now. No matter what bullshit McCain says, it will be handled straight by the MSM, while everything Obama says will be parsed and spun and questioned and belittled.

The nomination campaign was fun and games. Now the MSM gets back to making sure that nothing changes in the Establishment.

Obama is doomed.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 8, 2008 8:43 PM

an enormous dodge for reporters to write that John McCain plans to balance the budgeting by "entitlement programs, including Social Security".

You left out "overhauling" after the word "by," so the sentence makes no sense.

Posted by Swift Loris | July 9, 2008 1:03 AM