Bush's plan to remake Social Security: It isn't social and it isn't secure

As the year began, I said there were only two things Americans really needed to know about President George W. Bush's plan to remake Social Security: It isn't social and it isn't secure.

Now add two more truisms: It doesn't fix Social Security's finances. And it's not (really) your money.

The administration's habit of pumping up legitimate policy concerns into hyperbolic crises (WMD anyone?) haunts its proposal for Social Security overhaul. The president has warned for months that the program was going bankrupt, that no traditional fixes would shore it up and that creating private accounts would be its salvation.

The private-accounts-as-fiscal-rescue-plan pervaded Bush's rhetoric during his two presidential campaigns and, pretty much, right up until last week.

Then, something extraordinary happened: A "senior administration official" who briefed reporters told the truth. The transfer of payroll tax money into private accounts would in the long term have a "net neutral effect" on Social Security's fiscal situation. A "fair inference," the official said, is that private accounts do not contribute to solving Social Security's coming solvency problems.

So the president's plan does precisely nothing to address the crisis he keeps warning us about.

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