Exerpted from: Vast Borrowing Seen in Altering Social Security
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON for the New York Times



WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 - The White House and Republicans in Congress are all but certain to embrace large-scale government borrowing to help finance President Bush's plan to create personal investment accounts in Social Security, according to administration officials, members of Congress and independent analysts. ...

...Mr. Bush has vowed to push hard to remake Social Security. Republicans in Congress say the White House has signaled to them that Mr. Bush will put the issue at the top of his domestic agenda in the coming year.

But the White House has never answered fundamental questions about Mr. Bush's plan. In particular, it has not explained how it would deal with the financial quandary created by its call for personal accounts.

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The problem with this approach is that the full faith and confidence of the United States government has been dramatically adulterated in the eyes of the world, and the dollar is no longer seen by those in distant countries as the refuge of sane investment in troubled times. Without the reputation for probity and viability of the nation behind it, borrowing will be extremely expensive. Which in turn will accelerate our decline toward national insolvency and enforced reevaluation. If only we had a few billion dollars to spare to straighten all this out!! Unfortunately all our spare billions were needed to invade Iraq.

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