That Was Easy

Ultra-liberal media outlet The NY Daily News reports that it's game, set and match for private accounts:

WASHINGTON - President Bush has all but conceded his plan for private accounts for Social Security is dead, admitting privatization won't save the federal retirement system.

"You can solve the solvency issue without personal accounts," Bush said in an interview with the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

This actually isn't all that new. Bush has already repositioned the private accounts as simply "a better deal" for younger Americans (because slashed benefits by 40-50%, exorbitent money management fees, a several-trillion dollar addition to the federal debt, and an volatile stock market sounds like such a good deal for retirement insurance). The solvency idea, apparently, is to cut benefits for 70% of the population.

But it's definitely a shift in tactics. Before it was a rush to get the public on the side of private accounts. Now it's a rush to get on the public's side, bask in the warm and fuzzy glow of making Social Security "strong" and "healthy," and then sneak private accounts in through the back door. This won't happen this year; it seems that the interest groups on the right that saw 2005 as an historic moment to destroy Social Security have slunk back into the primordial soup. But they'll be back.

Democrats should loudly and proudly proclaim that they've won this battle, and now it's time to do something for the American people on retirement security and health care. Specifically health care, since Medicare is the crisis that Social Security never was.