Big-Balled Bush

You've got to hand one thing to the Bushies.

This administration has great big balls.

We don't just mean great big balls in the John Wayne-on-steroids sense. We mean serious traffic-stopping cojones, the kind that cast shadows the size of dirigibles, that have their own time zone, gargantuan nads that make the earth shudder and quake as if Armageddon has an 8 a.m. tee time.

So. Anyway, back to my point ...

The dust hasn't even settled from the Armstrong Williams fiasco, but still the White House is making no secret of taxpayer money being used to influence the political debate over the future of Social Security.

The New York Times' Robert Pear reveals that Social Security Administration officials are serving as White House lapdogs as the Prez and his chums sound the alarms on Social Security and push partial privatization as the long-term fix:

"The agency's plans are set forth in internal documents, including a 'tactical plan' for communications and marketing of the idea that Social Security faces dire financial problems requiring immediate action.

"Social Security officials say the agency is carrying out its mission to educate the public, including more than 47 million beneficiaries, and to support President Bush's agenda.

"But agency employees have complained to Social Security officials that they are being conscripted into a political battle over the future of the program. They question the accuracy of recent statements by the agency, and they say that money from the Social Security trust fund should not be used for such advocacy.

"'Trust fund dollars should not be used to promote a political agenda,' said Dana C. Duggins, a vice president of the Social Security Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 50,000 of the agency's 64,000 workers and has opposed private accounts."

Anyone sense a pattern here? Surely, even Bush proponents are troubled by the use of taxpayer funds for political advocacy. As Pear points out:

"The Bush administration ran afoul of a ban on 'covert propaganda' when it used tax money to promote the new Medicare drug benefit and to publicize the dangers of drug abuse by young people. The administration acknowledged paying a conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote its No Child Left Behind education policy. But on Social Security, unlike those issues, the government has not concealed its role.

"The agency's strategic communications plan says the following message is to be disseminated to 'all audiences' through speeches, seminars, public events, radio, television and newspapers: 'Social Security's long-term financing problems are serious and need to be addressed soon,' or else the program may not 'be there for future generations.'

"The plan says that Social Security managers should 'discuss solvency issues at staff meetings, insert solvency messages in all Social Security publications' and spread the word at nontraditional sites like farmers' markets and 'big box retail stores.'"

We will concede that the critics in Pear's story appear to be employees' representatives who certainly risk losing their jobs with a retooling of Social Security. But their motivation for speaking up isn't at issue -- nor, really, is the matter of how best to solve the entitlement program's projected shortfall. Valid arguments can be made, and are, for the concept of injecting choice into Social Security. There's something mighty stinky, however, when the case for doing so is financed and fashioned by the very agency at the eye of the political storm.

Granted, the lines are pretty fuzzy about how taxpayer money can be used for political promotion. Most elected officeholders, after all, maintain communications experts who espouse their bosses' agenda in the media. But blatantly partisan squabbles don't warrant taxpayer-funded spin from bureaucratic entities -- especially when the whole controversy is about whether the entity in question in is danger of going bust.