Will falsely suggested Sen. Clinton's support of tax credits for private retirement investment is new
SUMMARY: George Will wrote that Sen. Clinton "stridently opposed" President Bush's
"advocacy of personal accounts financed by a portion of individuals' Social
Security taxes" and suggested that her recent proposal to offer a matching tax
credit to families that invest in 401(k) retirement accounts reflects "an
undisclosed epiphany," after which "she belatedly recognizes that 401(k) funds
invested in equities are a foundation for security." But contrary to Will's
suggestion, Clinton has long expressed support for tax
credits for retirement investments, while opposing the diversion of Social
Security payments into private accounts.
In his October 17 column, Washington Post columnist George Will noted that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) both "stridently opposed" President Bush's "advocacy of personal accounts financed by a portion of individuals' Social Security taxes," and recently proposed "a matching tax credit" for families that invest in 401(k) retirement accounts. Will wrote of Clinton's proposal: "After an undisclosed epiphany, she belatedly recognizes that 401(k) funds invested in equities are a foundation for security." But contrary to Will's suggestion, Clinton has long expressed support for tax credits for retirement investments, while opposing the diversion of Social Security payments into private accounts.
Will wrote:
Clinton's idea for helping Americans save for retirement is this: Any family that earns less than $60,000 and that puts $1,000 into a new 401(k)-type plan would get a matching $1,000 tax cut. For those earning $60,000 to $100,000 the government would match half of the first $1,000. To pay for this, she proposes taxing people who'll be stoical about it - dead people - by freezing the estate-tax exemption at its 2009 level.
A conservative case can be made for something like this. It's a case for reducing the supply of government by reducing demand for it, and doing so by giving people ownership of enlarged private assets as a basis for their security. It's a case for raising the nation's deplorable saving rate and simultaneously encouraging economic literacy and temperance by giving more people a stake in equities.
President Bush made this case in his advocacy of personal accounts financed by a portion of individuals' Social Security taxes and invested in funds based on equities and bonds. Clinton stridently opposed him - and not just because she thought it would undermine Social Security's solvency and political support.
She also said it was a dangerous gamble that would make retirement insecure by linking retirement savings to the stock market - that investing retirement funds in the stock market was a "risky scheme."
Today her Web site calls her proposal a way to save for "a secure retirement." After an undisclosed epiphany, she belatedly recognizes that 401(k) funds invested in equities are a foundation for security.
During her U.S. Senate campaign in 2000, Clinton supported tax credits for people who put money in private retirement accounts. An October 30 New York Observer article quoted Clinton saying that Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) "really wants people to be able to save and have retirement security, and that's why I support the kind of retirement accounts that the President and the Vice President have proposed in slightly different forms, because I think that we should create means for people to be able to save and add to their Social Security benefits, and I support that."
Similarly, in an October 22, 2000, article, The New York Times reported that "Mrs. Clinton has recently endorsed a plan, modeled on [then-Vice President Al] Gore's, that would give tax credits to people who make less than $100,000 a year and put money away in special retirement savings accounts. Her plan limits the amount of money individuals can invest to $1,000 a year, rather than Mr. Gore's $2,000, and would cost about $120 billion over a decade, according to her campaign." And a November 5, 2000, Times article reported, "When it comes to retirement plans, Mrs. Clinton backs a scaled-down version of Vice President Al Gore's proposed retirement savings accounts." An October 2000 Manhattan Institute report stated that "Mrs. Clinton's supplemental retirement savings program, which she calls Retirement Savings Accounts (RSA), is the same as Gore's RSP [Retirement Savings Plus] program but with a maximum account size half as large -- $1,000 per individual, compared to $2,000 under the Gore plan." An October 9, 2000, Time magazine article described Gore's savings accounts as "voluntary, tax-free savings accounts similar to 401(k)s that can be used to supplement Social Security."
During the 2000 campaign, Clinton also rejected proposals to allow private investment of Social Security funds. A November 6, 2000, New York Daily News article reported that Clinton's Senate opponent, then-Rep. Rick Lazio (R-NY), "[f]avors [the] concept of privatization to let workers invest some of their Social Security money." By contrast, the Daily News reported that Clinton "[o]pposes privatization of Social Security as too risky" and that she "proposes creation of new Retirement Savings Accounts, which would feature automatic annual government contributions."
In 2006 Clinton again supported a proposal for the government to give tax credits for retirement savings. In a July 2006 report, the American Dream Initiative, which Clinton chaired, laid out a "new opportunity agenda." Among the report's recommendations was a "Saver's Credit":
Instead of more breaks for those at the top, we should provide saving incentives to hard-working Americans who can least afford to put money aside. We should make the Saver's Credit permanent and refundable so that working- and middle-class families receive a 50 percent matching contribution for retirement savings of up to $2,000 a year.
Running regularly in at least 1,377 English-language daily newspapers in the United States, Will appears more frequently than any other syndicated columnist, as Media Matters for America documented.
Shouldn't we be wondering a bit more about why the Republicans are running so hard against Hillary right now during the primaries? Wouldn't they maybe fear that it would help her get Democrats in her corner to win the nomination? Or maybe they're HOPING for that? Because if they really feared her getting the nomination they absolutely wouldn't be doing this now. It looks exactly like what they did with Kerry.
I wonder about that, myself. I'm guessing that they have such an arsenal of bullsh*t built up on Hillary that they'll bury her in it as soon as the convention is over. Chances are, they don't have quite as much anti-Obama propaganda in the can, and would have to make it up on the fly. With Hillary, they could eat up several months just regurgitating all their lies from the 90s.
It wouldn't hurt their cause that half the country doesn't trust her and a third of the country hates her guts. Whether all of the criticism is fair or not won't make any difference when they're swearing in President Romney. They'll use Sideshow Rudy up until actual delegates start getting assigned and then look for the ascendency of their new empty suit with a haircut. They keep doing the same tricks, I don't know why it should be hard to read them.
Nerzog, just consider what it's going to look like to the swing voters who finally turn the channel next fall to see who is running. After 20 years of Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush, the Democrats are going to be asking them to vote Clinton 08. With a haircut like Romney running, spewing all the basic nationalistic baloney, while Hillary is getting slammed from the right and the left simultaneously it's not to hard to picture the result.
Count on it that the RNC strategists are drooling over what the Democrats are doing right now. They don't worry as much about facing Obama in 2012 because then they'll have the incumbancy to work with. Even Hillary Democrats recognize Obama as the future of the party. If they would wake up and hit the GOP with him now, they would actually get that future. Otherwise it's more of the same and worse.
GOPers fear Hillary for two gigantic reasons.
1) She's married to the most charismatic politician we've seen in the last generation. Not lost on GOPers is the fact that Bill outran, outcampaigned, outgoverned, outclevered them at every turn. What should not be lost on we Democrats is that no other candidate but Bill has been this effective since Johnson. And we lost with a few decent ones too. She's not Bill, to be sure, but he is the 900 pound Gorilla in the room.
2) No other candidate in the race quite crystallizes a full and consumate repudiation of everything BUSH but Hillary. Sure we like Edwards and others, and they maybe can win. But put Clinton in there and that's a hard slap in the chops for these GOPers.
Having said all that, I think she's running better than anybody now. The slime campaigns did not work on Bill. And they tried.
This filly can beat the boys.
The slime campaigns aren't working on her as you say. But this isn't the election, it's the primaries. Her supporters think the rest of the country will change their minds about her once we've given her our nomination. She's running well with people who have supported the Clintons for many years. She won't be able to pick up enough of that middle ground that Bill was able to or much of the actual left for that matter.
The biggest irony of the campaign is that the one candidate who is most like Clinton 92 is decidedly not Hillary but Obama. Like Bill back then, he is a charismatic, intelligent newcomer trying to take out a big GOP machine from the executive even while bringing the party kicking and screaming into the next phase.
Hillary is considered 'seasoned' because she is so good at employing GOP type language in her campaign. But time and again the Democrats have shown that they lose when they do GOP lite.
They nominated Kerry for depressingly similar reasons they are now attracted to Hillary as the nominee. It's a recipe for failure. I'm sick as hell of being right about this stuff. I will get no more satisfaction when Hillary goes down to the GOP than I did saying "told you so" to my Nader friends in 2000 or the folks I argued with against the Kerry nomination in 04. This is getting really old.
Oh and easy, if they feared her so much, they wouldn't be making so much noise about her during the Democrat's nominating process. Every time they go out of their way to warn everybody about her puts another Democratic primary voter into her corner. Do you think they don't understand this? Do you think they happen to mention her in their own debate ten times because they just can't help themselves?
If the feared her, they would publicly laugh her off and focus their attention and ire on the candidate they wanted to run against. Why is that so hard to understand? The simplest bit of reverse psychology is just too brilliant for their billion dollar strategists to come up with? Do you think they just have no interest in trying to influence who they get to run against? After Bush, Hillary is the only major Democrat they can possibly hope to win against.
I agree with both your assessments.
1. Hillary will lose the general election
2. Repbulicans are scared she might win.
Attacking Hillary is very easy for the GOPers. She is a lightning rod and her candidacy evokes a visceral dislike amongst Republicans similar to the BDS expressed daily here at MMFA.
The GOP candidates can attack and attack Hillary without it coming back to bite them later on.
Besides she provides so much fodder with her pandering for middleclass votes with proposals for $5,000 baby bonuses, socialized medicine, and $1,000 tax credits to be put in the stock market for retirement.
I think they not only want her as a candidate to run against because she has less of a chance of winning than Obama, they wouldn't mind her presidency as much either. She is a perfect lightning rod to keep them all in business for a long time. They've already shown at the end of Bill's term that they're perfectly willing to shut down the government to try to make the Clintons look worse than they are. Basically, all the Democrats picking over the various health care plans of the different candidates might as well be passengers on the Titanic arguing about which pubs to hit first in New York. If they don't go with Obama, none of it is going to happen anyway.
Oh and AA can you ever post anything without including a strawman? You say you agree with my assesments and then say 2. The GOP fears Hillary. My point was exactly the opposite of that. To the top RNC strategists, Hillary is absolutely the best thing they have going.
Well I think the polling I've seen shows Hillary stronger than Obama. But I'm not sure on that. As for comparing Obama to Bill Clinton...well, my personal view on that is that it's absurd, but I'll try to be charitably factual. Bill was a seasoned pol in 1992. He was not a newcomer. And as Gene Lyons has pointed out, and any TN or AR resident knows, they started the campaign against Bill in the 80s! Atwater knew he was dangerous then.
Obama looks like a potential empty vessel that could sink quickly under scrutiny. I feel so strongly against him that I fear even naming him as a VP would be harmful. Part of that is the racial exploitation we'd have to overcome, too. But his resume needs more depth for my taste.
The GOP smear machine will be working on anybody that steps up there. And though we agree that they hate Hillary worse, I'm not sure they won't work just as hard to beat Obama. I think they will work every bit as hard. We know Bill can stand up to the scrutiny because he still does it today. THATS really why the GOP hate him. I think she can take the heat too. She's done remarkably well so far, and I started out with a lot of questions about her. I was pulling for Biden or Edwards or maybe Gore. But no more. She's done better than all of them
Bill was a governor from a podunk state in 92. He was also very talented and saw that the party needed to take a slightly different tack to beat the Reaganites. Obama is a senator from a big economically powerful midwestern state that had the smarts to turn blue during the Bush years. He also is very talented and understands that the party needs to take a different tack to beat the Bushies.
Clinton voted yes on the Iraq resolution even though it was obvious the Bushies would use it to start a useless war. She did this because it was politically expedient at the time. That is the Democrats validating the slime of the GOP in the hopes of gaining political power. That's running Kerry because gosh he's a vet and they really respect vets.
The emperor walks in naked and they don't say he's naked, they criticize his new wardrobe. They're still a part of the illusion and the mess. Hillary is a part of that.
Running her will provide the GOP the chance to run a guy like Romney as the choice of change. 20 years. Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush and people are sick to death of it. The GOP knows how to take advantage of that and they have no fear of irony. They told people to vote for Bush over Kerry because Kerry didn't have a good enough solution to the mess Bush had created. And it worked. So now if we give them Clinton they will run as the party of change in 08. And it will work.
If the law would allow, I'd choose to run Clinton-Clinton-Clinton-Clinton...as nauseum. The GOP turned all the guns on him and could not stop him. He rolled over the best political figure they've had since Reagan, which was Newt. Newt would be president now if not for Bill. Newt's a has-been now.
You can call Arkansas a podunk state if you want, but his fellow governors thought a lot of him. He led them at the SCLC. He was the keynote speaker of the Dems in 1988, and not because he was a flash in the pan newbie, like Obama.
It was political expediency that caused a lot of Dems to vote for Bush to authorize war, and I was disappointed. But I was disappointed at some of them who voted pro-Clarence Thomas too, and I realized I had to get over it.
GOPers know how to beat Obama all across the South and out West. He's not battle-tested anyplace, and he practically had his Senate seat handed to him. I want someone who knows how to be tough and dirty, and who has proven themselves someplace. Several candidates meet that test, but Obama does not, IMO. And just watching the candidates so far, Hillary has stepped ahead of the rest of the field...and this despite taking heavy fire from GOP attack dogs. I like Edwards, Richardson and Biden, too, but Obama has already begun to wilt.
You keep missing the reality of it easy. Hillary hasn't taken a lead IN SPITE of Republican attacks. She's taken a lead BECAUSE of Republican attacks.
This isn't the general election. This is among Democratic primary voters. What effect exactly would the Republicans attacking one of our candidates be expected to have on that candidate? It's like Bin Laden calling Bush names or something. The enemy attacking you is the best tool ever for galvinizing support in your own camp. So the more outrageous the slander coming from the Republicans, the more likely Democrats are to defend her and get in her corner.
Just look at Media Matters these days. There are about four articles a day defending Hillary. She gets better press here than on her own website. The attacks help her. I don't know why that is hard to understand. It seems like there are some people who just don't want to understand it. Which is disturbingly familiar. I know this sounds harsh but I feel like I'm talking to Bush people sometimes because there are all these things that the Hillary people just don't want to deal with.
And the excuses for the Iraq war vote will never bring the millions who are pissed about it back to her in the general election. It's the definition of poor leadership to give into an obviously manipulated and murderous war fever. That's precicely the place you need a real leader. Not someone who will go with the current thinking even if they know it's bull. That's what a leader DOESN'T do. She's a cheesy politician, not a principled leader and everyone outside of the Democratic primary voters who want to give her the nomination see her that way. So what happens in the general election? President Romney. It's the only way the GOP can get that and we seem to want to give it to them.
Obama did not have to make that decision in 2002, since he was not a Senator. We don't know what he would have done. It was a very tough decision for many ppl, and for good reason, if you had any inkling at all of future progression in politics. Sure it was political expediency, and it's ugly. I was against the war in 1990 and would have voted against authorization both times, but I live in TN, so after that 1990 vote, I'd have been beaten in the next election...so I wouldn't have gotten a vote in 2002.
When Hillary gets attacked, she does not wilt. In fact, she dials up the intensity a notch. She picked that trait up from Bill, I think. I'm more than willing to keep Obama under consideration, but he needs to move. Hillary has seperated herself from the others and you are still drawing a line through her name. She is ahead because she is beating her opponents while staring them right in the eyeballs. That's the kind of mettle I've learned to respect.
Easy, you just seem to be skipping over the things that don't fit in with your thinking. You say she is ahead because she if facing her opponents so bravely. But those aren't her opponents. The people she is 'ahead' of right now are other Democrats among Democratic primary voters.
I'll just say it again. Those right wingers attacking her in the media are NOT her opponents right now.
All you are doing is demonstrating why the thing I am describing works. Your'e not refuting it, you're proving it.
You're impressed with how she faces those dirty righties so you're more likely to support her. The people who like those righties aren't the ones voting in the primaries. It's a contest among Democrats and she is being attacked by enemies of Democrats.
I can come up with ten other ways of describing it if you need me to. Can you at least show that you understand this point? I mean, refute it if you can but you seem to just not understand it so far.
It will be Hillary's own words that hurt her. She lies far too much even for a politician.
I guess we just have to take your word for it eh? Now George Will can anonymously source you as a poster to a known Democratic-leaning website that claims Hillary is a known liar.
And all that...yet no single solitary example. Yet Mitch McConnell was exposed in a lie about the 12yo kid two days ago...and well, Rudy can't afford to tell the truth on abortion can he?
heh...it worked on Kerry...but it won't work on this filly. I'm cackling as bad as Hillary now! Best reload that peashooter...yur guns aint big enuff.
Will wonders if PhDs would be able to understand the math ...
Why doesn't he get his Heritage Foundation PhDs to help him? I mean, his wondering about the $ level which a person would qualify is usually explained by them when the Repukes are whining about taxes. The Republicans are always the ones complaining about how they can't survive on the Congressional salary of $162K (not counting speakers' fees and committee $$$s, along with the free health care that people making more than the median can't afford either, along with the really cheap haircuts and the ice delivered every morning).
I wonder how many of the people who absolutely swallow Will's Kool-Aide understand the difference between "average" and "median"? Bill Gates walks into a room which holds 10 minimum wagers. One of them says "Hey, on average, we're millionaires!"
Thank you MMFA for unintentionally alerting the rest of us to Hillary's flip-flop!
Yes, she was for it before she was against it!
I just love that liberal logic! :-)
Oops. I meant to say... She was for it before she was against it , before she was for it.
(My apologies to Monsieur Kerry.)
Actually, I think what she was against was diversion of Social Security funds into private accounts. But, she appears to favor tax credits for private 401Ks. Those are two different things, right?
Like Kerry, she was for Idea A before she was against Idea B. Some contradiction.
Is what I just wrote really too much for conservatives to hold in their heads?
Yes steeve, I'm afraid it is. How else could someone vote for Little Bush?
Some people just don't understand how the legislative process works.
Let me ask a question.
If Congress and Bush can work out a compromise on SCHIP does that mean Bush was against it before he was for it?
Where does it say that she's against it?
Someone needs to read the article, and not just scan the headline and assume that the right-wing pundit whose misinformation is exposed is actually correct.
Apparently my friends here are again being purposefully ignorant to not see the Hillary contradiction. Of course that is to be expected.
The only caveat they can offer is to try to say that partial privatization of Social Security to private savings accounts is bad, but somehow taking other tax dollars and putting it in the same type of savings account is now good.
Please explain to me why with
1. both proposals using government funds
2. that come out of the same treasury,
3.to go into the same type of savings vehicle, (i.e. stock market),
that one is "risky" and the other is good. But not call it a contradiction.
But then that is why some of you cannot see the flip-flop-flip. But that is okay with me. I await to see another installment of typical liberal logic.
:-)
Bush wants to fund these accounts with Social Security taxes, money that is usually untouchable until disability or retirement.
Clinton's proposal is in addition to the Social Security taxes people are already having taken out of their paychecks.
Clinton proposes a "supplement" to SS, Bush wants to use SS taxes themselves. That is a big difference.
Anyway Will is wrong about this being a new position and it's not a flip, flop its apples and oranges.
Well done, Johnny. Maybe AA can see the "liberal logic" now that you explained it so clearly. But I'm betting he won't.
Even if the "typical liberal logic" chant is running out of steam, Barney's still got the fresh "Bush Derangement Syndrome" and "I've got a bridge to sell you" zingers.
Good point. Those witticisms still have a lot of life left in them, if previous patterns hold true.
Maybe George Will needs to have an epifany?
But I guess the #1 pundit knows it all already.
Damn! I mispelled Epiphany!
Our little conservative pundit, and sterling wordsmith, will not approve of that.
I can spell pompous.
Pom /pos / i / ty -noun, plural -ties
1. the quality of being pompous.
2. pompous parading of dignity or importance.
3. an instance of being pompous, as by ostentatious loftiness of language, manner or behavior.
[Origin: 1400-50; late ME pomposite<...]
Bush's proposal undermines the safety net and Hillary's doesn't.
Again, so easy, a conservative can't understand it.
So after calling someone ignorant, a poster too stupid to put his shoes in the right feet explains to us why apples are really oranges. The posters put their finger on the EXACT argument and you didnt understand it like you never understand ANYTHING. Your stupidity is awe inspring. Your ability to understand basic concepts, non existant.
Economy shot, rising gas prices, food prices increasing, housing bubble bursting, and this is the best Hillary can offer? A tax credit if you give more of your earnings to Wall Street? And all the Democrats argue about how "electable" she is, not bothering to notice that she's a RIGHT-WINGER, well, just conveniently ignoring that little fact and drooling over the prospect of a team win for the other Bad Guys.
Is America destined to be the nazis of the 21st Century? Are we destined to fall as Rome did, on it's own decadence and arrogance, in imperial overextension? Both parties of the Roman Senate favoured the worst of policies, while fighting amongst themselves for political power and the personal riches it would bring. Now I know how the early Christians felt, persecuted for not worshipping Caesar and the rotten, decaying empire for which he/she stands.
Senator Clinton is against allowing individuals a percentage of their social security taxes into personal savings accounts but is for 5K for every infant into private accounts so the money will grow for college. Is this true or not?
If this is true isn't this isn't this a problem for her?
She's just selling the same Bush plans with different methods. Her "health care" plan will make us all wage-slaves to the insurance industry and her $5k for each child is a huge tax giveaway to Wall Street. It's EXACTLY the same stuff Bush wants to do with Social Security....give our taxes to the corporations so they kick more back into the party campaign coffers. Corporatism...it's fascism all over again.