No compromise on Social Security Possible

Jonathan Chait has an excellent article on Social Security in The New Republic. I'm not going to repeat much of it here, it's long but you should go read it. The basic theme of the article is compromise will not be possible which is summed up in the final two paragraphs.

Some liberals are naturally attracted to the prospect of offering subsidized savings accounts to help workers who have never had the chance to save money and build wealth. It's an attractive goal. (Though whether it's a compelling use of public funds given our desperate fiscal straits is open to dispute.) The key obstacle is that Bush supports those accounts only as a bludgeon against Social Security. If a given bill doesn't sow the seeds of the program's demise, Bush almost certainly won't sign it.

Likewise, he will have little incentive to sign a bill that merely eliminated the program's future deficit, because doing so would deprive him of his strongest pretext for privatization. The key point Democrats should understand is that, while it may be tactically useful to favor an alternative to privatization, no decent alternative is going to be signed into law under this president. There will be plenty of time in the future for shoring up Social Security or adding spiffy new savings vehicles. In the meantime, the crown jewel of the New Deal faces an existential threat. Defeating that threat is the task to which we must presently address ourselves.

Make sure your Democratic Lawmakers read this and make sure they understand that no compromise is possible.