Kevin Drum at Political Animal opines on why the Republicans are pushing Social Security “reform”, but ignoring Medicare, which is in much worse shape. He notes that solving the problems with Medicare is going to be a mess and needs to happen much sooner.

The people doing this have little concern for Social Security, any payments they might be entitled to will amount to “lunch money” in their retirement plans. Most will be receiving generous taxpayer-funded retirements and/or are already wealthy people: nobody runs for Congress because of the paycheck. From their point of view, Social Security is an employee expense that they would like to do without. Removing the cap on Social Security taxes while maintaining the cap on benefits would not only fund the system for the foreseeable future, it might enable the rate to come down.

Medicare, on the other hand, is something that they and their friends do use. Medicare will reduce the cost of their medical insurance significantly, so they approve of it.

The problems with Medicare were, to a large extent, exacerbated by the actions of the Republicans in their Medicare Drug Bill. The drug coverage was a nice idea, but they shouldn’t have removed the possibility of negotiating for lower prices. In the free market buyers and sellers negotiate, in the Republican market consumers pay whatever the corporations want.

Bush continues his unbroken string of rewards for incompetents by awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Iraq War’s “Three Stooges”: Tenet, Franks, and Bremer.

Tenet’s pre-war intelligence was uniformly wrong. It was so bad, that it was a wonder the US managed to find the country.

Frank’s war skills were so stellar that at a time when the military was recalling 70-year-olds to active duty, he was allowed to retire. Not enough troops, and no attempt to maintain order or secure weapons dumps.

Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority was so inept that his efforts at rebuilding cost taxpayers billions while leaving the Iraqis worse off when he departed than when he arrived.

A note to Bush: when you award a medal that is suspended from a neck ribbon, you fasten the ribbon before hand, face the honoree, and slip it over their head, which they bow to accept the award. It’s a medal, George, not a necklace. You have a protocol chief at the White House, he/she can show you how it’s supposed to be done.