Andrew Biggs, a conservative who served on George W. Bush’s Social Security commission, has gotten some attention for writing a piece in National Review today explaining that privatization is no cure-all for Social Security’s problems:
Personal accounts are a valid choice, and one I’ve supported in the past and continue to support. But accounts aren’t exclusive to tax increases or benefit cuts; they don’t, as I’ll explain, reduce the need for these other choices. One problem for the Bush administration’s reform drive in 2005 was that many congressional Republicans had bought into the idea that accounts reduce or eliminate the need for tax increases or benefit cuts. Finding out they don’t may have taken some wind out of their sails. Because of this, combined with some pretty shameless demagoguery from the left, Bush’s reform ideas didn’t even come up for a vote.
Shameless demagoguery? Hold on a second. The left was indeed opposed to Bush’s plan, but a lot of the opposition was based on the fact that it was sold as a costless panacea, exactly the problem that Biggs himself identifies. My own position was (and is) that Social Security should simply be left alone for the time being, but that there are also some legitimate reasons to bite the bullet and shore up its financial position now — and if we do, “there’s nothing wrong with private accounts in theory as long as they’re properly accounted for, tightly regulated, and honestly funded.”
Don’t believe it? Click the link and my proposal for Social Security reform with private accounts is right there. Would liberals accept this if it were presented honestly? I don’t know, because no one has ever tried it that way. But they might. The problem is that “honestly” almost unavoidably includes some tax increases, and that kind of honesty just isn’t acceptable to current Republican dogma. So we’re stuck. There’s the dishonest approach, which Democrats won’t accept because it’s dishonest, and there’s the honest approach, which Republicans won’t accept because it’s honest. It’s hard to see the middle ground here.
