Something I've been wondering about lately is why the Bushies didn't offer up a privatization plan that liberals might actually be able to live with. That is, instead of carving out some sort of private account from the existing Social Security revenue stream, they could have just added a point to the tax rate on both sides (employer and employee) and created the accounts that way. It would've had weaker opposition if the current benefit system was, for the moment, left intact, and of course once the system was in place it would have been easier to muck with it later in a way liberals wouldn't like.
