Pozen Blasts Bu$h Privatization Plans (Progressive Indexing, remember?)

[AnnInLa]

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=917

Pozen Blasts Bush Privatization Plans

President Bush’s Social Security plans just suffered another serious blow. Robert Pozen, whose “progressive indexing” plan was firmly endorsed by the president at a high-profile press conference last month, has said that Bush should drop his plans for private accounts.

Just out from CQ, password req’d:

said Wednesday that Bush should “back away” from the other half – the insistence that individual investment accounts be created in the program. …

“I would advise the president to say that carve-out accounts are no longer required,” Pozen said in an interview after a debate at the American Enterprise Institute with Brookings Institution scholar Peter R. Orszag, a leading critic of Bush’s proposal. Bush, Pozen said, should indicate that he is “willing to have a package that, if otherwise satisfactory, does not have carve-out accounts.”

Not only that, Pozen challenged the wider theme that Bush has used to justify private accounts:

For many conservatives, the philosophical importance of creating accounts from the payroll tax cannot be understated. They believe it would turn many lower-income workers into investors, ushering in a new “ownership society"…

more at http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=917

[swag]

1. Great find.

Thanks for posting.

[gratuitous]

2. Gee, there goes Bushie's "bipartisan" support for his scheme

Pozen was supposed to be all the Democratic cover Bush needed to claim some tenuous "bipartisan" ground for his scheme to plunder the Treasury and give the money to the overrich. Now what will he do? Pretend Pozen is still on his side? Call Zell Miller?