GOOD ENOUGH FOR HARRY:

Bush Highlights Thrift Savings Plans (Fox News, March 31, 2005)

The retirement savings plan that federal employees enjoy and President Bush cites as a model for his individual investment accounts differs in a key regard from what he proposes: Bush would carve the new accounts out of the Social Security taxes workers now pay.

The government workers' savings plan, by contrast, is in addition to the Social Security taxes they pay and the benefits they are promised.

Democrats have said they would be much more inclined to embrace the private accounts — the signature item of the president's proposed Social Security overhaul — if they, too, were treated as an add-on to the traditional benefit check rather than a partial replacement.

One Republican, Rep. Clay Shaw of Florida, who oversees a House Social Security subcommittee, has filed legislation that would create the accounts as an addition to the program. But so far the broader debate over ensuring Social Security's long-term solvency has stalled over opposition to the president's "carve-out" accounts.

"It is just so unfair, misleading and fraudulent," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said of the president's references to the Thrift Savings Plan (search). The Nevada Democrat accused the administration of using carve-out accounts as a Trojan Horse for eliminating Social Security, by siphoning off the taxes that pay benefits.

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, said: "It's a political pitch because his accounts can't stand on their own merits, so what he tries to do is pretend that the Thrift Savings Plan that Congress and federal employees have is the same as what he's proposing and is something Congress is denying to the public."

Do it as an add-on but means test SS benefits and both sides can claim victory, even though it effectively ends SS.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 31, 2005 7:47 PM