GOP plan for Social Security privatization

• Hot from the pages of Thursday's Washington Post, "House GOP Offers Plan For Social Security---Bush's Private Accounts Would Be Scaled Back" by Mike Allen and Jonathan Weisman.
• This time the big idea comes from Republican leaders to sneak in some privatization (individual investment accounts) on a smaller scale than the Grand Vizier himself would like.
• The Republicans' big idea is to finance accounts with the Social Security surplus, that is, the amount of payroll tax revenue that is not needed to pay out current benefits.
• That money is generally lifted for other government projects, and is expected to run out after 2016, the Post reports, "as the baby-boom generation retires."
• This is in contrast to George W. Bush's proposed private accounts' scam, which would directly suck up payroll taxes used to pay for existing Social Security benefits, and which would drive the government, the world's biggest borrower, to borrow even more to prevent cuts in retirees' monthly checks.
• Which adds up to not much of value for either plan.
• But the Republicans are hoping this new veil of tears will prevent you from seeing the future benefits cuts that Bush is calling for, and to ending what they themselves call the "raid" on the current Social Security surplus.
• Congress, as usual, will borrow that money to fund other programs and then send $69 billion worth of Treasury bonds to the Social Security Trust Fund.
• In fact, those bonds would be cashed in to finance benefits once the system did slip into deficit.
• But under this new GOP brainstorm, those bonds would go straight to private investment accounts to be opened for workers, unless of course they were smart enough to choose not to participate.
• The Social Security Administration predicts that, even at its height, the cash surplus will reach $97 billion.