Mark Schmitt Agrees with Me...

Peter Orszag is a national treasure:

The Decembrist: Peter Orszag is a national treasure: I'm watching the Finance Committee hearing on Social Security. Peter Orszag of Brookings and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities just had a wonderful metaphor to respond to the idea that private accounts are a 'sweetener' or 'dessert' to Social Security that will make it easier to swallow the tax increases or benefit cuts that would ensure solvency.

'That's like trying to convince your kid to eat spinach by offering him a turnip for desert.'

Perhaps the most bizarre thing is that I'm told that the White House has for months had numbers like Robert Shiller's and Goldman Sachs's thumbs-down assessments of the desirability of private accounts on the terms the administration has offered them. Yet they haven't bothered to change the terms, or even to make the argument that financing investments by borrowing from your Social Security defined-benefit account at 3% plus inflation is a good deal. Something very similar used to happen with Ira Magaziner and company: Marina Weiss--Bentsen's senior health care aide--would go in there and say, "Ira, we don't think this will work. Moreover, Robert Reischauer at CBO and Breaux's and Moynihan's people in the Senate think like us--they won't think this will work either. And you need Reischauer, Breaux, and Moynihan to be enthusiastic or this is going nowhere." And there would be no response.