Typical. A little dribble of detail is heralded as a plan, but its interesting to note that the Bush administration seems almost timid about moving forward on anything but saying 'we need to move forward'.
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites)'s advisers have settled on a proposal for structuring the personal accounts they hope to create in Social Security (news - web sites), while on Capitol Hill Senate Democrats were launching an effort to defeat the plan altogether.
Under a plan recommended to Bush, the private accounts would resemble many company-sponsored retirement plans, with just a handful of investment options.
By default, workers would be enrolled in a "life cycle" account, in which investments become more conservative as investors age, if they do not choose one of the other options, according to two officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050128/ap_on_go_pr_wh/social_security
Routinely Bushian... its all vague and full of references to the 'private sector' without any real details or direct attempts to explain how we are supposed to pay for this mess. But the more details that come forward... the easier it will be to fill this paper tissue balloon full of lead and expose it for the sham it is.
Yet to be decided are several big questions, including how large the private accounts should be, how much guaranteed benefits would be cut and how to pay as much as $2 trillion needed in the first 10 years to effect the transition to a new system.
Also, its funny how Bush, and therefore the media, can say and tout its 'private sector' origins... but you can't say 'private account' anymore because that's 'scaring seniors' (at least this week) and to write the term in your article is a blatant example of 'media bias'. The Bushies keep changing the rules on how you are supposed to refer to their plans and its nice to see the AP reporter just say Private Accounts and be done with it.
But the best thing of all is that, more and more, its becoming clear that a majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate are gearing up for a knock-down drag-out brawl on this one. The GOP is obviously running scared of being gutted by a Social Security misstep in the 2006 elections, as the editorial cartoon Kos has posted on the front page shows wonderfully, and its time to start blasting away.