Rob at Say Anything asks, “Why is Bush trying to fix Social Security?” He raises a couple of good points: Even if everything Bush is saying is true, Social Security could survive for quite a while after he was out of office. It’s not benefitting him politically, obviously, and he doesn’t have to worry about whether he gets re-elected (Finance and investment executives were among Bush’s more active fundraisers). The move doesn’t benefit his generation nearly as much as it would benefit the generation of his daughters (though, to be fair, it’s unlikely that either President Bush or his daughters will be in a situation where they’re incredibly dependent on Social Security).

People on my side of the debate tend to think that the reason is that Bush wants to do what’s best for the country’s citizens. There’s good reason to believe that money invested in the stock market will out perform the return we get on Social Security money now. I would much rather see an account I could look at and monitor than have all my money go into a “trust fund” completely maintained by the government. More control over my money is a good thing. (Incidentally, I don’t much care for the idea that the government would be forcing me to save, but given my tendency to save very little, it’s probably good for me.)

One of Rob’s readers suggests that Bush is supporting the partial privatization because he’s paying back the huge Wall Street firms. With this administration, he says, you just need to follow the money.

There’s a problem with that logic, though. We can’t say that the correlation between Bush getting money from investment firms and his support for privatization (which some actually don’t think will benefit Wall Street, though those opinions seem to be in the minority) necessarily means that he supports privatization because some stock brokers who gave him money would benefit.

Suppose John Doe is running for President and he supports an original interpretation of the Constitution. Various companies give money to his campaign, but far and away the biggest contributors are gun manufacturers. John wins, and almost immediately, he begins campaigning for the repeal of all gun control laws. His opponents would come out in droves to say he was in the pockets of the gun manufacturers, but the fact is, John’s strong belief in the Second Amendment was the reason he’d decided to run in the first place.

Here are the facts:

• President Bush is fighting for partial privatization of Social Security.
• Finance and investment executives gave a lot of money to Bush’s campaign.

Here’s an assumption that I’ll grant (since, despite some protests as listed above, I figure there’s a lot of truth in it):

• Wall Street (read: Finance and investment companies) will benefit from partial privatization of Social Security.

Some possible conslusions that can be reached from these facts:

• President Bush supports partial privatization of Social Security because he’s received money from those who will benefit from it.
• People who benefit from partial privatization financially supported President Bush because he supported the partial privatization.

Even if these were the only facts in evidence, we couldn’t prove that Bush’s support for partial privatization was caused by or the cause of the support from finance and investment executives. They’re not the only facts, though. The president’s opponent had been very vocal that he would like to raise taxes on “the rich” (he used the euphemism “roll back the tax cuts”), for a very loose definition of “rich”. The President and Senator Kerry had very different takes on a number of issues, and any of those issues could have explained support from those in the financial sector.

This kind of question could be raised about any politician and any voting bloc — do the politicians support the interest of that group because they supported the politician (financially or politically), or vice versa? The relationship between politicians and their constituents is, largely, symbiotic. Neither group is totally being leeched by the other.

Still, let’s take for granted that Bush supports this proposal because the people who gave him money want it. Does it matter? The numbers on the privatization system look good. Gaveston County in Texas has apparently had some success with a privatized Social Security system. (More information: 1 2)

If the plan works, why not let people who choose to do so opt into it? Why would Democrats, the party that supposedly supports the Right to Choose, fight against letting people choose? The numbers I’ve seen support the privatization plan as I understand it. Given that, I don’t care why President Bush supports it. That should be a stance familiar to most Democrats — they support Planned Parenthood because of the “good” it does, despite the fact that there is reason to believe its founder supported it as a means to limit the reproduction of “inferior” races.

If you’d like to debate the merits of the partial privatization plan, that’s great. Arguing about the motives of the people who support the plan is a pointless straw man argument. Unless you’re a mind reader, any guess about the motives of a politician is just a guess, and irrelevant to whether or not the legislation benefits the country as a whole or not.