Fulminating

In today's Wash Post Charles Krauthammer fulminates about the Democrats opposition to President Bush's Social Security proposal. What really exercises him is that Democrats keep saying there's no crisis in Social Security because the Trust Fund doesn't run out until 2052:

As I have been writing for years with stupefying redundancy -- and obvious lack of success -- this idea is a hoax. There is no trust fund. The past Social Security surpluses were spent the year they were created. The idea that in 2017, when the surpluses disappear, we will be able to go to a box in West Virginia to retrieve the money we need to make up the shortfall (between what Social Security takes in and what it pays out that year) is a deception. There is no money there. It will have to be borrowed or garnered from new taxes.

And as I have been writing for years, the Trust Fund is real. The coming crisis is a fiscal crisis not a Social Security crisis. The pols have been spending the Social Security surplus. It was morally wrong. It meant we were balancing the budget on the backs of workers. All those tax cuts to the wealthy? They came out of the hides of working class people.

What will happen to our politics when the American people figure this out? Ah, that will be something to behold. It will churn up our politics and parties and maybe even lead to the birth of a new party. It is one of those milestones that will mark a true change in our politics. And it is coming.

You heard it here.