By the way, here's something else that I believe we should count as a Bush win, but in the longer run, it's a much bigger win for every worker in the United States.

Try the news here (from The Washington Post):

New Law To Expand Reach of 401(k)s

Way Is Cleared for Default Enrollment

The gist of this news -- employees can be automatically enrolled in their employer's 401(k) plans and be automatically set to put their money into any of 3 specific areas without the employer fearing legal liability.  In the past, employers were concerned that they could be sued for having invested their employee's money poorly so many didn't auto-enroll their employees in their 401(k) plans and as a result many employees that could have been growing their own retirement accounts weren't.

Another important change here is that the standard will be switching to one where employees must OPT-OUT of auto-enrollment in 401(k) plans.  Again, in the past employees had to opt-in (partly because of fears of liability I believe) and many didn't.  They may not have understood the implications of participating in or not participating in a 401(k) plan, or they may have felt that they needed to keep more of their own money in their pocket now rather than thinking about their longer term financial stability.

I'm glad to see these changes made.  The more employees we have participating in 401(k) plans the better.  401(k) plans have proven to be an invaluable tool for retirement planning and too many employees have missed opportunities to be setting aside money and having it grow at a pace several times that of the meager returns that money that is collected for Social Security does.  Employees that invest just a few thousand dollars early in their career, and continue to invest over time, benefit from compound interest and growth in the prices of the stocks and other securities that they hold in these plans.  As more workers put more money into these plans, and have it grow over their career, more people will have a real secure source of money in their future, rather than relying upon the hopes that Congress will continue to band-aid up the pyramid scheme that is known as Social Security.

I'm sure that there'll be bleeting from those on the liberal side of the aisle that this could wind up leading to eventual privatization of Social Security.  One should only hope so.  (And there might be bleeting about the idea that employees are being forced into participating in 401(k) plans against their will, but that would just show a mis-understanding of what the principle of 'opt-out' really means...)