I don't know if it's so much liberalism that will be at an end. Hopefully, liberalism in its classic sense, which has nothing to do with the left, can re-invent itself into a force for good.

What will, hopefully, be coming to an end, is the new dealer, ward heeling mentality of the dems.

One can hope, eh?

So Bob Kerry is the Dem for reform? 10 yrs ago he might have made a difference but I can't see him swaying many minds.

My prediction is still that the Dems won't support SS reform at all and Bush will have to hold all of the GOP together to get reform done.

The most startling line in Kerrey's piece is that SS and Medicare represent a powerful inter-generational contract between the young and the old.

I don't remember signing.

Senator Dorgan might allow a provision that only registered Republican's may set up a private account, but not Democrats. That way everybody is happy.

How are you going to keep them down on the farm (or anywhere else) after the've seen a 401k with an Index Fund?

You know, that would be a good rejoinder for a pubbie defending it on TV.

Here is an excerpt from Moynihan's Op-Ed in the NYT on 5/30/00. [I am sorry I do not have a URL, but it would not help any way] The Bush plan is essentially an adaptation of this:

May 30, 2000

Building Wealth for Everyone

By DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN

WASHINGTON -- . . .

In the 1930's, for the first time we enacted national legislation providing unemployment insurance, an old-age pension to be known as Social Security, and a mother's pension, Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The first two programs were presented as contributory insurance. . . Franklin Roosevelt's insistence that each worker have a separate account, like a bank account. His or hers. As F.D.R. put it to Gulick, so that "no damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program." (Observe that A.F.D.C. was not contributory. Soon it became known as "welfare," and it was repealed in 1996.)

. . . And now we have the opportunity for a grand culmination, starting this century with a system of voluntary, contributory savings plans such that Americans will end their working lives with a measure of wealth. An estate. And for the first time, an American idea!

A bit of background. In 1977, Social Security, the retirement program, was changed from a pay-as-you-go system to a partially funded system. The revered Robert J. Meyers, who was present at the creation in 1935 and still analyzes Social Security financing, records, "The underlying financing mechanism was to build up a reserve."

. . . We added two percentage points to the F.I.C.A. tax . . . such that today some 80 percent of American households that pay this tax pay more in Social Security than in income taxes. In time, larger Social Security surpluses appeared, enough to moderate the even larger federal budget deficits of the 1980's, and then to bring us into the overall budget surplus of today.

Now here is the point. If we will make a few, admittedly difficult but wholly defensible changes in the existing program, those two extra percentage points won't be needed. Workers could take back their half -- the employer keeps the other half -- or could choose to invest the two percentage points in a personal savings plan modeled on that available to federal employees since 1987. Let the magic of compound interest work its magic.

Here are the main changes.

Use an accurate cost-of-living adjustment. The consumer price index overstates inflation by about eight-tenths of a percentage point, even after recent improvements made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Next, provide normal taxation of benefits, which are now only partially taxed. Then extend coverage to all newly hired state and local workers, a quarter of whom don't pay into Social Security from their primary earnings but get benefits through part-time jobs.

Finally, increase the number of years counted in computing benefits from 35 to 38. Of a sudden you are in 75-year actuarial balance and don't need those two percentage points of payroll taxes.

On March 18, 1998, Senator J. Robert Kerrey and I introduced the Social Security Solvency Act, with these benefit adjustments and a provision for a "voluntary investment of payroll tax cut by employees."

. . . It would be unforgivable to label this "privatization." But it has already begun. . .

The term goes back to the presidential campaign of 1964, in which Barry Goldwater made an offhand remark that Social Security should be made voluntary. . .Doris Kearns Goodwin, a distinguished historian of the period, recently described a Democratic ad of that campaign depicting scissors cutting a Social Security card in half.

The charge is hurled at every opportunity. Establishing personal savings accounts is described as turning Social Security over to Wall Street. Dock workers would become day traders. A market downturn could wipe out benefits.

. . . A parallel arrangement under Social Security would, at a 7 percent non-inflation-adjusted rate of return, provide an average worker (making $30,000 a year), with $350,000 of savings at the end of 45 years. A measure of wealth.

In 1944 the British came up with the slogan of "cradle to grave" protection. We propose something beyond: an estate! For doormen, as well as those living in the duplexes above.