I think the above video more closely represents his biggest failure. Here’s the link to the article.
Former President George W. Bush signaled on Thursday that he sees not privatizing Social Security as his greatest failure from the eight years he served in the White House, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The unpopular Republican leader made the suggestion while speaking at a trade conference in the Windy City, where he discussed his legacy and also offered a glimpse into what readers can expect from his forthcoming memoir, Decision Points.
“I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities,” explained Bush. “In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.”
Bush poked fun at himself in addressing how his thoughts will be delivered in his memoir.
His biggest failure was stopping the Democrats control of the Fannie Mae generated sub-prime mortgage disaster. Thanks for destroying the economy Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
Typo:
His biggest failure was not stopping the Democrats control of the Fannie Mae generated sub-prime mortgage disaster. Thanks for destroying the economy Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
Well the system is spending more than it takes in, and it is a going-forward deficit of many tens of trillions of dollars.
What a f*cking bastard. At least he is consistent.
The mere fact that he still thinks privatizing social security (funneling billions of more tax payer dollars to wall street in the process) is a good idea is proof he is still clueless.
His biggest failure is lying us into war with Iraq costing 2 trillion tax payer dollars and 4500 American lives and a million Iraqi lives. He should be forever be labeled as a failure just for that alone.
What a stupid f*cking bastard.
“His biggest failure was stopping the Democrats control of the Fannie Mae generated sub-prime mortgage disaster. Thanks for destroying the economy Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.”
Liar! The sub-prime mortgage disaster is the result of corporate greed and deregulation sponsored by the Republicans. The Dems had no power in preventing the crash.
A rare occasion when I actually agreed with the bastard, along with his half-hearted attempt at immigration reform. Inflation-adjusted annuities are available on the open market, and they probably don’t hold a bunch of IOU’s to themselves for money they’ve already spent.
“Well the system is spending more than it takes in, and it is a going-forward deficit of many tens of trillions of dollars.”
Another corporate fascist lie. Social Security has always run at a profit. It will go into the red later this decade, but if people making more than $100,000 were required to pay the same percentage of their income as those that make less, then Social Security would forever be at a profit.
#9 – are you kidding? Do you think the government has a secret vault where they’ve been stashing all the money they collect for social security, so it will be available for future retirees?
The government spends ALL the money it collects. Plus another $trillion. Including all the social security money.
All they’ve got it is a balance sheet that has a number in 1 column which represents all the money collected for social security, and another number which represents all the money paid out this year for social security.
At the moment the 1st number (revenue) for social security is bigger than the 2nd number (payments).
But, in reality, they’ve SPENT ALL THE F*&KING MONEY!!!
You can thank Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan for your problems. They saw the boomer’s coming, and raised the ceiling on SS, sort of a boomer pay up front for their benefits. This was a great plan but with one problem, Reagan’s now famous tax cuts for the rich left a major hole in his budget. Greenspan said no problem we can take all of this money the boomer’s paid into SS and use it to plug the budget. And because you are borrowing “government money” to fund “government expenditures” you don’t list it as part of the deficit. Much of the deficit will magically disappear and nobody will know about it until the boomer’s start and retire in the future. So all of you so called conservatives can stop blaming the boomer’s who paid their fair share only to have the government steal their money and put the blame on the back of Greenspan Reagan Bush 1 and Clinton.
How about killing social security all together and let me keep my f-ing money!
@#12 That is privatizing Social Security… Just Govt. would force you to save certain percentage of your own money at your own choice of funds until you retire. All of your money staying yours all the time.
#9,10
the point at which Social Security spends more money than it takes in is not the relevant budget point. As pointed out, the money gets spent either way. The real impact on the budget is when the surplus starts decreasing. At that point, the government has less money than the year before from that revenue source, and has to adjust. That point has been passed. Now the challenge is how to pay out the tens of trillions in benefits. Privatization would cost more in the early years, but turns the future deficits into surpluses.
W has been, is, and always will be a clueless nucking futjob.
If he had succeeded in moving millions of peoples money from SocSec to the stock market by, let’s say, 2007, then we’d be in a deeper pile of dung than we are now. Should a monetary move like that ever happen, stock values will shoot up due to the sudden availability of hundreds or thousands of billions of dollars. Can you imagine the disaster had a higher priced set of stocks plummeted due to W’s & Congress’ inability (or complicity) in the financial mess?
W – take your Federal retirement income, shove your head into a hole in the ground (or somewhere else), and just GO AWAY.
@#9 You’d be great candidate to be sold a ponzi scheme. Present Social Security system is exactly that. No matter how much money you draw in or how carefully you guard the funds, such system can’t last but for few generations (less if birth rate slows), last of which are ALL losers. Number of potential losers and amount lost rises every year. Sooner we drive a stake through Social Security Ponzi Scheme, lesser the overall damage. I’d be happier paying into it for the reminder of its life if I knew that it ends at date certain (reasonable number: people 54 or younger now wouldn’t get any benefits from it. I am in that group. Also, people 21 and younger now should never contribute to it [I am not in that group] the rest contributing only until the last participant now over 54 dies off).
MikeN: Privatization would cost more in the early years, but turns the future deficits into surpluses.
Maybe it creates surpluses. Maybe. But what it definitely does is multiplies the risk involved by a significant factor…risk that doesn’t exist now.
Besides, a couple minor tweaks as mentioned here already (no risk) and SS lives for several more decades.
It’s all the deomcrats fault….no wait it’s all the republicans fault, no democrats, no WAIT republicans.
Ha ha. This is fun.
#12 & #13
You both understand that SSI only takes 6.2% of your pay right?
Let’s say that you make the median of $50k a year from age 20 (doubtful) to retire at 65. That would only amount to around 140K total. Now IF you are not the average person, saved all that money somehow (very doubtful) and invested it at 3% without any losses along the way (improbability so high we might as well laugh now) You might have 310k by that 65 retirement date.
Now let’s be really blinded by fantasy that you had no major financial set backs, no children that needed money from you to go to college, no medical needs for yourself, wife, parents as they aged or children… adjusting for inflation that 310K would NOT keep you going until you died unless you live like a pauper.
Of course the facts are that most people save less than 10% of what they make and so that 6.2% being taken out is going to be reduced down to less that 1%. Couple that with all the expenses in your life and the possibility of disaster and medical illness and you might keep half that or about 250 bucks a year.
THAT was the problem before SSI. More people died as paupers than lived comfortably in their dotage. And many lived with their families being a burden for years.
Now nowhere am I saying that the current system is IDEAL. But it is better than letting people manage their own money when most cannot do so. It is NOT something we teach people to do or that people readily understand.
The system needs to be fixed, but then so does everything else in The Republic. But you cannot expect plutocrats to help non-plutocrats.
#14
And the privatisation of the investing was so good for those that lost between 30-60% of their investments in the past recession. If the big firms can lose your money, how could they suddenly be so much better at keeping it for your SSI?
When the sole purpose of a company is profit and the service is the second consideration, possibly third; how can there be profit for the consumer? There cannot be. Privatisation like stock brokerages, bundling home mortgages and everything else is a gamble. And we all know the HOUSE is often the winner.
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I can’t believe anybody would waste almost 13 minutes listening to this lying sack of shit, now that he isn’t in office anymore.
I’m not singling him out. I believe all politicians are lying sacks of shit.
After reading this blog and a few others on this same topic, I’m thinking that this forthcoming book may have an unanticipated effect…removing any remaining doubt that GHWB was the worst and stupidest president in modern history.
#21
There were far worse than Bush. He’s in the top ten though. But there were worse.
In fact the US has had more bad presidents than good ones.
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Come on guys when some one like Bush is trying to figure out what his biggest failure was he has so much to consider we can forgive him for missing the few hundred bigger/real ones.
“Biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe”
I guess he is forgetting 9/11 and his specific warnings something was coming, or that his actions after 9/11 made US popularity around the world drop to its lowest levels ever making terrorist recruiting even easer.
Obama, not perfect but so much better.
“The unpopular Republican leader….”
Um, at what point do we call the current occupant of the WH ‘unpopular’ and ask what HIS biggest failure is?
It’s looking pretty bleak on the pension front. With the ‘new normal’ of the economy – we’re told being _optimistic_ we can expect a return on our money of under 4% (taking into account inflation).
That would mean for a pension of _at best_ 40k USD per anum you would need to have amassed 1 million USD. How may people are going to do that do you think?
This makes the pensions you get with government jobs look surprisingly attractive.
In a world with less growth (or perhaps no growth or worse) using dividends/bonds/stocks to pay for a reasonable pension is going to be pretty hard. Extra points for working out why it’s not unlikely there will be negative growth, in the not too distant future.
Pause the vitriol for a moment to recollect that he was re-elected, served two terms in office and would probably have won a third term if the credit bubble hadn’t popped. The wars, failed health system, corporate malfeasance, civil right violations and torture of suspects in custody were obviously OK with the electorate.
George W. Bush’s biggest failure was his BIRTH!
’nuff said.
The main long term problem with SS is the way the trust fund is managed. Congress has used it as a convenient way to monetize government debt for almost 80 years now. Every year they remove the dollars that wage earners have deposited into the trust fund and replace them with an equal face value of government debt. They of course then proceed to spend the money on numerous things, both good and bad. When the bonds come due, they are replaced with … new bonds!
The trust fund could be managed by a fiduciary. That is someone who is paid to manage the trust fund in the best interests of the fund participants. The fund could then be better managed with a combination of bonds, gov or otherwise, capital type investments etc. If you think about it, it’s just a different way to “privatize” the trust fund’s assests.
Over a long term this type of portfolio mangement can provide gains which exceed those from government bonds alone. The % of particular types of investments would be limited within certain ranges, i.e. gov bonds must be 30 to 40% of the portfolio. And restraints would be placed on the quality or ratings of the holdings.
This is how life insurance companies manage their long term commitments. Some retirement plans are also managed in a similar fashion. Federal employees have access to specific types of balanced funds which function like this within their retirement Thrift Savings Plan. It can get a little complicated and like any money management program it will have its ups and downs (some call this lumpy returns). But it is done and has been done sucessfully for some time by many professional investment pros. Such a program could provide better long term stability to the trust fund.
This of course will never happen because it would require Congress to close the cookie jar on its own hand. Sad.
As to our past President’s biggest failure I would say this. After 9/11 he had an historical opportunity to unite almost all Americans. He was given an opportunity to become one of history’s great Presidents. He squandered that opportunity. I think that will be the judgement of history on Mr. Bush.
For those of you who must know, I’ll save you the trouble of asking. Yes I voted for him, the first time only.
Sargasso…
First of all, Bush did NOT win two terms. He was appointed by the Supreme Court in his first term, and got us into a war, based on a lie, while his popularity was at a low point. This boosted his popularity, and he was elected in his second term.
He could not have won a third term, as it is prohibited by the US Constitution, by the 22nd Amendment, or did you forget about that?
Your point is therefore moot.
Wow. NOT losing 60% of people’s retirement funds when the market crashed was his biggest failure!
Invading the wrong friggin’ country and killing hundreds of thousands of people is a mere trifle compared to that!
Seriously, Bush seems like a sociopath.