Lockbox Redux

One of the things I enjoyed doing over at ESPN was taking the rare occasion to turn a poster's words against their point. Admittedly, it's just a fun little rhetorical trick though depending on how you use it, it can have a considerable effect.

Well, Donald Luskin in his piece at NRO today, turns the same trick:

But as with everything else the Left has said in this debate, their rendition of the White House's concession is greatly exaggerated. Sure, the White House conceded that putting money into personal accounts that would have otherwise gone into the Social Security Trust Funds doesn't create new money to bolster the system. But that doesn't mean that personal accounts invested in private markets wouldn't strengthen the system another way-- by pre-funding future benefits with real economic resources.

There's a way that the advocates of reform could easily make this case. All they have to do is borrow a famous buzzword from none other than Al Gore.

No, I'm not kidding. The fact is that personal accounts are nothing less than a Social Security lockbox. Yes, a lockbox--what Al Gore went on and on about in the 2000 election.

Heh!

Fun rhetoric aside, Luskin's bottom line-point is a good one:

This should make it clear that the Trust Funds represent no pre-funding of future benefits at all. Social Security is now, in fact, nothing but a pay-as-you-go system. As the Congressional Budget Office put it in a June, 2004, report, "positive trust fund balances indicate the legal authority to pay benefits but not the budgetary resources to do so."

Your Social Security personal account, on the other hand, will be true savings. You'll have the opportunity to really invest your money in the private economy--corporate stocks and corporate bonds, real diversified investments that don't require anybody paying higher taxes or borrowing more money when it comes time for you to sell during your retirement years.