Saving Social Security

President Bush wants to Save Social Security. The Republican Party wants to Save Social Security. Republicans in Congress want to Save Social Security. Seeing a trend? So let's check in with one of the Presidents Supporters, the guy at Power Line, a conservative blog, to see what he thinks about Social Security. Power Line blogged the debate last night (while I was busy with lemons and cinderblocks), and here is his reaction to the Social Security Section of the State of the Union.

8:28--Good idea to cite various proposals to fix SS, mostly from Dems. For now, at least, he's pretty much agnostic. The real problem, of course, is the transition to a new system. This isn't the fault of the new system; it is what makes Social Security such a diabolically bad system. It's like a drug addiction; there is no convenient opportunity to terminate the program. Why personal accounts are a better deal: rate of return is always a big argument, but the more important point, I think, is ownership. The money is yours, and the government can never take it away. You can pass it on. I think that's the point that has to be pounded home.

To me it sounds like Power Line doesn't so much want to Save Social Security. It sounds almost like he'd be happier seeing it go away, replaced by this new program that, Power Line, at least, seems to see as fundementally different from Social Security.

There's the rub--Republicans (for the most part) don't want to admit that they want to Destroy Social Security. That wouldn't play well. So instead of having an honest debate over whether or not Social Security is a good idea (in which both side has some good arguments), we are debating a plan to Save Social Security put together by people who's ideology goes completely in the opposite direction.