A LOSS IS AS GOOD AS A WIN:

On the Social Security Battlefield: Bush’s plan for changing America’s retirement-benefits system has echoes of Iraq: chaos, resolute leadership and eventually compromise. (Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey, March 9, 2005, Newsweek)

[P]resident George W. Bush’s advisers believe the messy process of debate will itself lead to the solution with broadest support.

Next, the leadership question. One of the Bushies’ greatest talents is to appear resolute throughout, while preparing to compromise all along. In Iraq that meant pushing out the United Nations before inviting them in, and disbanding the army before reconstituting another one. It also meant wasting time and money on a dysfunctional occupation before celebrating the emergence of an elected Iraqi government. Where President Bush has been consistent is maintaining troop levels in Iraq since the invasion—no small feat—while constantly shifting his policies both inside Iraq and with the outside world.

Social Security is another exercise in resolute compromise. Last week the president said he supported personal accounts as an “add-on” to Social Security, using Democratic language for accounts that would not be funded by diverting payroll taxes. White House aides said the term wasn’t meant to signal any shift in policy, just as they did when Treasury Secretary John Snow suggested the administration might consider such accounts. That may be true, but the comments still test the water of what’s acceptable inside Washington and signal a readiness to negotiate without conceding an inch of policy. By their own admission, White House officials say nothing has been ruled out—except for a rise in taxes. And even that was compromised when the president raised the possibility of lifting the cap on payroll taxes.

Get the add-ons and means testing and you've privatized the program. In 2007 you go back and let folks divert the actual SS taxes.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2005 12:00 AM