Word: trillion
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PLAN: Devote more than a third of the projected surplus--$1.6 trillion--to tax cuts, including a broad cut for all income brackets. Double the child tax credit, give a credit to married couples regardless of whether they pay the marriage penalty, and repeal the estate...
PLAN: Use about half the Social Security surplus--roughly $1 trillion--to allow young workers to invest one-sixth of their payroll taxes in private accounts...
IMPACT: Depends on the stock market. The $1 trillion price tag means the program may go bankrupt 10 years earlier; to cover the cost, Bush will have to cut benefits. If the market continues its historical rate of return of 7% a year (or even if it gains a more modest 5% a year), such cuts would be painless because the private-account nest egg for most future beneficiaries would more than equal the benefits they would receive under the current system. But there's no benefit floor to protect losers...
PLAN: Use the entire Social Security surplus and other revenues to pay down the $3.5 trillion national debt by 2012, then devote the savings in interest payments (more than $200 billion annually) to Social Security. Give workers matching funds to encourage them to build their own private savings accounts...
...confusion is in what he says, not how he says it. He's running harder against Washington than anyone in years, but he's the first Republican in a decade who doesn't want to blow up the Education Department and padlock the I.R.S. He wants to spend a trillion dollars of the surplus to let people invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market, yet he promises not to cut benefits, although there would be no spare trillion lying around to fund them. He blasts Gore for proposing more new spending than at any time since...