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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (681820)	5/10/2005 1:29:51 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

The Personal 'Lockbox' How to break the logjam on Social Security reform. JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL Monday, May 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT Many supporters of Social Security reform are already declaring it a lost cause. Columnist Charles Krauthammer says the idea "isn't dead, but it's pretty sick." Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard says President Bush needs an "exit strategy" because "it's hard to see how a reform measure can pass." Bill Kristol, editor of the Standard, says that if the White House is "willing to unwind the Social Security proposal and accept defeat sometime this year, it won't do them any damage" in next year's elections. All of this gloom is premature. There are ways for Mr. Bush to turn the political tables on his opponents. He made a start by endorsing the progressive indexing of Social Security benefits, which would ensure the bottom 30% of wage earners would all get benefits that lift them above the poverty line. He could combine that with a bold move to protect the $2.2 trillion in Social Security surpluses flowing into the system over the next nine years from being "raided" by a spendthrift Congress. One way to do that would be to create a true "lockbox" that allows people to put their share of the surplus into their own personal account to help fund their retirement. But the account would be limited to no-risk, but marketable, Treasury bills. Every taxpayer who voluntarily chose to create a T-Bill personal account would, in effect, own the key to his own lockbox, containing a significant chunk of their future benefits. The surpluses would become real assets owned by citizens rather than government IOUs--or, more accurate, "I owe me's"--piling up in a filing cabinet in a federal office in West Virginia. Message 21306356