From Holden:

There was no leisurely mid-day bike ride for your president today. Destroying Social Security is hard work, so Chimpy took baboon-a-palooza to a meeting of the National Association of Realtors today.

First, allow me to supply the punchline to this joke.

Now, I understand how this works in politics. I mean, you start talking about Social Security and the first thing that happens, there’s all kinds of fliers and propaganda that go out that try to frighten today’s seniors.

Armstrong Williams is doing a fabulous job. [My punchline, thank you very much.]

Next, your president says that if we make no changes to Social Security your benefits just might be reduced as much as 30%.

If we wait, if we take the politically easy path, it’s conceivable that young workers will have to pay an 18-percent payroll tax in order to pay for my generation, or the government is going to have to slash benefits by about 30 percent or other government programs.

So he has bravely backed a proposal that will, er…. reduce future benefits…

So I proposed a Social Security system in the future where benefits for workers with the lowest incomes will grow faster than the benefits for people who are better off. Economists call this idea progressive indexing. It means that in the future all workers will get Social Security checks bigger than the ones they receive today, but that the benefits will rise at a rate we can better afford.

And this plan he has endorsed? Well, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, it will reduce benefits up to , uh… 29%.

Progressive price indexing would reduce annual benefits for an average wage-earner who is 25 today and retires in 2045 by 16 percent or $3,523 (in inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars), relative to the benefits that the worker would receive under the current benefit structure. For an average-earner who retires in 2075, the benefit reduction would be 28 percent or $7,629 in today’s dollars.

And the full faith and credit of the United States of America? Hee-hee, it’s nothing but a joke!

See, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. I alluded to it earlier — you pay, we go ahead and spend. (Laughter.) You’re paying your payroll taxes. Some people in this country believe as you pay your payroll taxes, the government holds it and then when you retire we give it back to you. (Laughter.) No, the government takes your payroll taxes, we pay out to current retirees, and with any money left over, we fund the rest of government. And that which — and then what ends up happening is, there is a filing cabinet in West Virginia that’s got an IOU in it. (Laughter.) I know firsthand; I saw the filing cabinet with the IOUs. (Laughter.) That’s the solvency of the system. The solvency of the system is paper.

And you thought Laura’s horse-wanking joke brought down the house.