WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 - Over the objections of many of its own employees, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort to publicize the financial problems of Social Security and to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution...
---------
So this tells me that a potential wholesale gutting is in the works, with the other possibility that the WH will overhaul the agency internally and enforce some long list of `austerity' measures to `streamline' and make it more `efficient', basically kill it through regulatory power. With enough stories of inefficiencies, corruption, scandal, and so forth--all coming from the rightwing smear machine--the agency will look and probably be a wreck by the time GWB's plan is ready for Congress to rubber stamp, say by summer. After months of breaking it down, they can then claim to fix it.
My only hope is that Iraq will continue to deteriorate into an even more horrible nightmare and stall GWB's domestic agenda.
CG