A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Slowing the privatization train

by 1 Comment

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial about the attempts to outsource the FSSA eligibility operation entitled “Slowing the Privatization Train.”

The main issues are that Mitch Roob had connections to one of the two companies, ACS, in the hunt for the billion dollar contract and that one of the companies, Accenture, has had problems in Texas severe enough that Texas legislators threatened to fire them from Texas’s working on its benefit-eligibility system.

The Journal Gazette also takes the administration to task for its apparent indifference to public input, demonstrated by its initial scheduling of the public hearing one day after the contract was to be finalized and five days before it was to be signed — all over the 4th of July Holiday.

IN-09: DCCC pledges more attention to Baron Hill in ’06

by 1 Comment

There is an article in The Hill on Baron Hill’s race against Mike Sodrel. Apparently the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2004 spent a ton of money on losing efforts attempting to help incumbent Democrats survive Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting (which was of dubious legality and which is one of the thing that caused his fall from power.) The National Republican Campaign Committee spent $1 million more on Sodrel in the last two months of the 2004 campaign than the DCCC spent on Hill. This year the DCCC has promised to make Hill a priority.

Political price to pay for social security privatization plan

by 5 Comments

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is running ads in Indiana’s 8th and 9th Congressional District chastizing Reps. Sodrel and Hostettler for supporting the social security privatization plan that kicked off President Bush’s doomed second term.

The plan would have diverted funds paid in by younger citizens, currently being used to pay for benefits to current recipients, to private accounts. No plan was in place to fill resulting hole in social security funding, so we would have had to borrowed even more money.

The ad says:

“President Bush wants to borrow $2 trillion dollars – driving up our debt even further to privatize Social Security,” the announcer says. No one knows exactly how much the transition would have cost, but Vice President Cheney said it would be trillions.

The article went on to say:

Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that paid for the ad, said even though privatization is not up for a vote this year, “when given the political opportunity, we believe the president and the Republican majority will try to pass privatization again.”

Rep. Hostettler responded with a statement that said, “With no agenda from their leadership and a candidate with no original ideas of his own, the liberals are resorting to scaring senior citizens once again.”

I think the Ellsworth campaign captures an important point with their response:

Jay Howser, spokesman for Democrat Brad Ellsworth, Hostettler’s opponent in the November election, said both campaigns have ideas on Social Security. Ellsworth wants to protect a program that has been working for 60 years, and Hostettler wants to change it by moving money into private accounts.

“It’s a clear difference between the two,” he said.

Doing something for the sake of doing something is a bad habit among politicians. Social security has been one of the government’s more successful programs, and I think leaving well enough alone is a good strategy. Certainly, to the extent it does have problems, they are minor compared to the other problems with the federal government. First and foremost, the federal government needs to stop raiding social security to pay for general fund expenditures and it needs to pay back the money it has borrowed from Social Security.

Hill challenges Sodrel to debate on energy policy

by 5 Comments

David Mann has an article in Jeffersonville/New Albany News-Tribune.Net on Baron Hill’s debate challenge to Mike Sodrel. Hill wants the debate to focus on energy policy.

Standing in front of the gas pumps outside of Kraft Marathon Service Station in Clarksville, Hill said it’s time for he and Sodrel to hold a debate on energy policy issues. The former congressman criticized Sodrel for calling current gas prices anything less than “a crisis” situation.

The Hill campaign has been showing off an interview in which Sodrel told Indianapolis’ WTHR-TV that gas prices may not be an issue in November.

“He’s lost touch in no time flat,” Hill told reporters Monday.

But Sodrel defended his statement.

“Frankly we don’t know that far out,” he said. “Prices have gone down in some place by 10 to 15 cents per gallon. I don’t know if we’re going to call it a crisis.”

Personally, I don’t know if I would call the current gas prices a crisis either. But, if it was fair for President Bush to call the state of Social Security a crisis, I guess our gas prices are a super-duper mega crisis. It is, however, telling that Sodrel is only concerned about what the gas situation will be in November. Apparently, he wants to be able to ignore the issue altogether.