Should Democrats Negotiate Social Security with Bush?

How does someone negotiate with people who take words you were using yesterday to mean one set of actions and abruptly change them today to mean a very different set of actions. Josh Marshall points out how the statements coming out of the White House do exactly this.

Since the White House has not presented any written plan, they seem to feel free to redefine the term "add-on accounts" to mean "accounts established by taking a part of the FICA tax and redirecting it to private accounts instead of current benefits."

Without a written plan presented by the White House and accepted by Congressional Republicans there is really nothing to negotiate. No Democrat who attempts to negotiate at this time can trust the Republicans to be consistent or honest. It is, in fact, much more likely that they will not be.

The result is that any Democrat who attempts to negotiate Social Security at this time does nothing except support the Republican extremists who intend to phase out Social Security. So the answer is - No. No Democrat should attempt to negotiate with the Republicans.

This freelancing is a particular characteristic of Senators. Senator Harry Reid has his hands full. He has his share of rambunctious Democratic cats to herd and mavericks can be really dangerous.

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Addendum [Mar 5, 2005 - 7:35AM]

The Daily Howler has an excellent analysis of why the so-called add-on accounts are a bad idea to begin with.

Besides, if add-on accounts are a good idea, then they already exist. They are called IRA's and the various permutations of that account. Of course, they are voluntary.

If you make putting money into an IRA mandatory, that is a tax increase - unless you decrease the FICA Tax money that goes into traditional Social Security by an equal amount. Then it is not an add-on but a carve-out and precisely the kind of thing that the Republicans want in order to phase out government guaranteed Social Security benefits.

Any Democrat who negotiates with Republicans on Social Security should realize that they are attempting to kiss a live uncontrolled snake and expecting it to not bite them.