It appears as though all of this talk about a Social Security overhaul is not working in the President's favor. The Washington Post reports today, "President Bush's bid to restructure Social Security may have to wait until next year and might not involve the individual accounts the White House has been pushing hard." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) expressed these sentiments yesterday, and they are a blow to the administration's obvious efforts over the last few months to market their plans for Social Security privatization. Many GOP Congressman have been out in the field pushing SS overhaul over the past few weeks, and many are now wary about forging ahead with a politically risky plan that doesn't have a good deal of demonstrated public support. So, it appears that Social Security reform may be put on the back burner for a while. This is due to both the fact that many Democrats have been voicing strong opposition to the private accounts supported by the administration, as well as because Republican lawmakers are extremely divided among themselves as to how to proceed with an overhaul, and whether or not our economy could sustain borrowing trillions of dollars to finance it. To read more about the current hurdles facing a Social Security overhaul, click here.

Tell your members of Congress to oppose a budget resolution that would be harmful to many Americans as well as economically irresponsible. You can take action by clicking here.

An editorial in this week's edition of Business Week came out in favor of a fair and responsible estate tax as a means to generate needed national revenue. The editorial said this: "An estate tax that protects families, small farmers,and businesses can still generate tens of billions of dollars in revenues. Letting lapse the income tax cut of the highest income bracket could also generate billions of dollars of tax revenue that could pay for the teachers and emergency responders who will lose their jobs under budget proposals to reduce federal aid to cities. The budget also calls for cuts in Food & Drug Administration inspections of imported food and medicine -- right after a British plant supply half the flu vaccine to the U. S. was closed due to contamination."

As this article in today's Washington Post points out, America's overall indebtedness to foreigners now totals approximately $3 trillion dollars. The trade deficit in 2004 grew 24 percent to a record $617.7 billion. While the administration and Secretary of the Treasury John Snow are touting the trade deficit as economically beneficial, many economists are wary. In an op-ed piece in the Financial Times a few months ago, Snow wrote, "The deficit reflects foremost the strengths of the U.S. economy -- high productivity, strong U.S. growth relative to growth abroad, and the relative attraction of investing in our robust, dynamic economy, which has the deepest and most resilient capital markets in the world." Many economists many economists, however, see problems in the fact that as our trade deficit is growing, the money streaming into our country from foreign markets is not helping to finance a boom in assets such as factories and machinery; instead it is contributing to record levels of consumption based on credit by U.S. citizens. This consumption includes the ever-important oil, which our country continues to consume in very high levels. As Thomas Friedman writes in a New York Times column today, "We are importing too much oil, so the dollar's strength is being sapped as oil prices continue to rise. And we are importing too much capital, because we are saving too little and spending too much, as both a society and a government." This falling dollar without any checks on spending, he points out, could lead to problems down the road. He quotes former Clinton Commerce Department official David Rothkopf as saying "Given the number of people who have refinanced their homes with floating-rate mortgages, the falling dollar is a kind of sword of Damocles, getting closer and closer to their heads. And with any kind of sudden market disruption - caused by anything from a terror attack to signs that a big country has gotten queasy about buying dollars - the bubble could burst in a very unpleasant way." See this editorial in today's Times for more information on why the weak dollar is not currently helping our economic situation.