Star Parker reports that the fight to reform Social Security is not going well. Basically she blasts Bush for clouding the issue instead of getting his message out to the people.

I think part of the problem is that Bush doesn't have a plan for reform. He's said that it needs to be reformed and that Congress must do something, but everything after that is kinda vague. Perhaps pushing a specific plan would clear things up.

Of course, I've yet to see a plan that I even like. The 2% plan doesn't go far enough to fix the problem. It's a good first step, but I would propose a more 'radical' and 'extremist' solution. It seems to me that workers (especially white collar workers) already have private accounts and are accustomed to putting a portion of their income into them. They're called 401k, and currently you are permitted to put up to 15% of your income into them, up to the annual cap. I would rather have the option of opting out of Social Security altogether, so long as I contribute to my 401k. The numbers still need to be worked out, but a person contributing $10-15,000 of their income a year should be in good shape come retirement. If need be, the fed can relax the cap and contribution rate a bit to let people put more pre-tax dollars in there. Or it can be supplimented with IRA accounts. Philosophically, I still don't think that retirement planning should be compulsory but as long as it is, if you can show that you are investing at a certain threshhold people should be permitted to opt out of social security completely.