1978: George W. Bush on Social Security

Apparently, George W. Bush has been pushing the idea of a Social Security "crisis" for quite some time. Unfortunately for him, his words have been preserved - he predicted that the system would crash quite a few years ago. Now that he is doing it again, why should anyone believe him?

A 1999 article (via TPM) states:

According to Gary Ott, who was then a reporter for the Plainview Daily Herald, Bush stopped by the paper’s little office "maybe five or six times. He’d sit down at my desk; he was a fun guy. He was very outgoing, very friendly, and we would argue politics since I was a liberal. We’d argue over Carter policies." Bush criticized energy policy, federal land use policy, subsidized housing, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("a misuse of power," he said), and he warned that Social Security would go bust in ten years unless people were given a chance to invest the money themselves.

I wonder what Bush would have recommended for people to invest their money in... Enron, perhaps? Maybe his friend Ken Lay could have siphoned off a few hundred million more that way.

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