Doom is at hand

When I read this:

Overall economic growth should be a healthy 3.5 percent next year and 3.4 percent in 2006. Those estimates are up from last year's forecast, which put growth rates at 3.4 percent in 2005 and 3.3 percent in 2006.

"The economy is in very solid shape," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

I thought to myself, "That's good news for Social Security." Then I saw this at Ygelesias:

When Bushies talk about the budget they say: "Mr. Mankiw said the official estimates assumed that productivity would continue to grow rapidly." But if productivity continues to grow rapidly, even the pseudo-crisis in Social Security won't materialize -- the program will be very healthy and successful indeed.

Elsewhere:

Unless productivity growth between now and the year 200X is extremely low (which the SSA does not project) then starting in the year 200X+1 the SSA will, unless it changes its methodology, find itself changing its "intermediate" projection to one that's considerably more optimistic about the future growth potential of the US economy. This will eliminate the projected pseudo-crisis and with it the rationale for privatization. Thus the desire to do it in a hurry before we reach the new peak and the projections get recalculated.

I'm not surprised we would see this kind of misdirection from the group that repeatedly tried to link Al Qaeda and 9/11 in the minds of the people to rush us off to war. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Saddam Hussein is responsible for the coming false crisis and that we must act now in order to defend the country from islamofacism. Those who do not support the President's plan will be traitors to America.