Social Security: Help for the Poor or Help for All?
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
and EDUARDO PORTER

WASHINGTON, April 30 - In attempting to fix Social Security's long-term problems without raising taxes, President Bush has chosen to recast the 70-year-old retirement program as one that would keep the lowest-income workers out of poverty but become increasingly irrelevant to the middle class and the affluent.<snip>

But those earning an average income, about $36,500 in today's dollars, would see big changes. Instead of replacing 36 percent of that person's working pay, as promised under today's system, benefits would cover only 26 percent of pay by 2075. And people who earn $90,000 a year in today's dollars would continue to pay as much as ever in taxes but would receive benefits equal to only 12 percent of their pay.<snip>

But critics, including most Democratic lawmakers, say that such an approach would undermine a central bargain conceived during the New Deal: that Social Security is not just a welfare program for the poor but a form of social insurance that people at all income levels pay into and reap rewards from.<snip>

That one change (remove wage cap) would affect 6 percent of all workers, the very highest earners, but actuarial experts estimate that it would raise almost enough money to eliminate the projected shortfall without needing to cut benefits at all.<snip>
NY times

Well, so much for Progressives not having a plan.

Maybe the real problem here is that the Mainstream Media is to busy pissing themselves over some bad Pickle0 puns.