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Originally posted by sgtclub
I think the opposition is purely ideological - the DEMs don't want to see an undoing of one of the pillars of the New Deal.
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Again, don't automatically presume that people opposing catapults do so only because they have a vested interest in selling train tracks.
After all, at least some Dems voted for welfare reform, you may recall.
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It seems to me that there is a lot of room to strike a deal here. Would you object to some combination of raising the minimum age and allowing self directed investment accounts for a portion of an individual' SS account?
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I don't pretend to be an expert here, but my understanding is that even Bush's own Social Security Commission concluded that
partial privatization just doesn't work.
- Who thought the Bush Social Security Commission would have such a pitiful demise? The whole point of the Commission -- which, improbably enough, had libs jittery and wingers giddy -- was to send up a privatization proposal which would have the wind in its sails, define reform as privatization, and perhaps even arrest Pat Moynihan's precipitous slide into mendacity, hackdom and irrelevance.
Now the last of these three objectives was obviously a pipe dream. Number two was a tough proposition. But who would have thought they wouldn't even be able to manage number one? I mean, the whole cliche about presidential commissions is that their reports sit on library shelves collecting dust. Releasing not a report or a proposal but three different vague policy recommendations really charts new territory on the barren wasteland of commission fecklessness. No wonder privatizers in the media feel like they've been had.
The denouement is pitiful but the reality behind it is instructive. For years, privatization opponents have insisted that when it came down to brass tacks, there was no way to hash out a partial privatization plan that actually worked. That is, it was impossible if you defined 'working' as a) insuring long-term solvency for the program, b) not requiring massive benefit cuts, c) not requiring sizeable tax increases, and d) not being based on bogus accounting.
What happened is that when the Commission tried to do it they discovered that this was pretty much true.
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