Whatever Happened To Social Security Privatization?

Somehow President Bush's biggest promise for his second term -- Social Security privatization -- has totally vanished from the political scene this summer. Bush, you may remember, was going to "revolutionize" our old age insurance scheme by, in effect, repealing one of the greatest achievments of Roosevelt's New Deal and replacing it with some sort of Mutual Fund for Americans.

It was a loser issue from the beginning but Bush thought he could slip it by the electorate. His problem was, though, that he was not able to "9/11" the issue as he did with the Iraqi War, the Patriot Act, the energy bill and a host of his other initiatives. The argument that privatization of Social Security benefits was necessary to defeat the terrorists somehow just could not be made -- even by this administration. So his proposal died on its merits.