"Reforming" Social Security

Rather than raising taxes a little bit to handle any long-term problems with Social Security, Republicans would prefer to rely on markets to make up shortfalls, despite the markets' proven ability to slide into long-term funks (e.g., 1968-1982) that could jeopardize the entire project.

The White House and Republicans in Congress are all but certain to embrace large-scale government borrowing to help finance President Bush's plan to create personal investment accounts in Social Security, according to administration officials, members of Congress and independent analysts.

The White House says it has made no decisions about how to pay for establishing the accounts, and among Republicans on Capitol Hill there are divergent opinions about how much borrowing would be prudent at a time when the government is running large budget deficits. Many Democrats say that the costs associated with setting up personal accounts just make Social Security's financial problems worse, and that the United States can scarcely afford to add to its rapidly growing national debt.

Amazingly for a supposedly "conservative" Administration, Bush's clique wants to borrow the entire transition cost, which might absorb most, maybe all, of the savings on Earth. What planet do these ideologues live on? Good luck with their scheme! As Kevin Drum points out:

The White House is planning to recruit yet another economic team, and what seems to be driving it is their difficulty in finding people sufficiently willing to sell their souls to the devil. Anyone with a remaining shred of integrity knows that financing Social Security privatization via higher deficits is madness, which means Bush's task is to find people from the ever dwindling pool of loyalists willing to make the case anyway.