contrapositive

WHAT'S GOING ON? The President has been traveling around the country for months complaining about Social Security's "low rate of return."

But on Thursday, he praised a plan that cuts benefits by more than 20% for most workers.

Now, in my book, that seems like a surefire way to diminish Social Security's rate of return, not improve it.

So what's going on? Actually, it's pretty simple.

The Bushies have made the calculation that they won't be able to kill Social Security--at least not any time soon. So, as Paul Krugman explains, they're going to try to wound it: They're going to try to undermine it by reducing the size of the program's constituency.

And then they'll kill it--somewhere down the road. At least that's their hope.

Everything else is beside the point: The strategy behind the new plan really is just that simple.