Presidential math

This

Bush did not lay out any specific ideas in his news conference, but the fact sheet said "benefit increases for wealthier seniors should grow no faster than the rate of inflation," adding that "this reform would solve approximately 70 percent of the funding problems facing Social Security."

Plus this, the President's own words last night:

A variety of options are available to solve the rest of the problem, and I will work with Congress on any good-faith proposal that does not raise the payroll tax rate or harm our economy.

Equals even more benefit cuts on top or his slippery slope to middle class poverty known as "progressive indexing."

If you aren't going to raise the revenue Social Scurity takes in, you have to cut benefits that it pays out. Those are your only two choices. So if Bush is ruling out tax increases, there's only one thing left...

And before you think that slippery slope he proposed is a fine idea, think about how much you made last year. $30k? $40k? Take a look at this, if you haven't already.

How do those cuts sound to you?

*UPDATE* Yglesias at the Prospect notes it's cuts to disability payments that are proposed to make up this gap, in an post he entitiles "Math, White House Style." Great minds and all that?

*UPDATE* And if things don't go as bad as Social Security projections claim they will, an arguement many have made repeatedly since the debate began? Benefits get cut even deeper:

For example, the Social Security actuaries project that real wage growth will average 1.1 percent annually. If real wage growth turns out to average 1.6 percent annually, the benefit cuts under progressive price indexing would be considerably larger than the benefit reductions described above. For example, under the Trustees’ assumptions of 1.1 percent real wage growth, an average-wage earner retiring in 2075 would get a 28 percent benefit reduction under progressive price indexing (relative to the benefits that would be provided under the current benefit structure). If real wage growth were 1.6 percent, this worker would be subject to a 35 percent benefit reduction.

Yet stronger real wage growth would reduce Social Security’s imbalance (by increasing payroll tax revenues upfront and increasing benefit payments only with a considerable lag in time). The Social Security Trustees estimate that increasing real wage growth to 1.6 percent annually would eliminate nearly one-third of the 75-year shortfall. This means that if real wage growth were stronger in future decades than the Trustees currently project, progressive price indexing would result in deeper benefit cuts, even as the Social Security shortfall was getting smaller on its own.