Social Security round-up

Matthew Yglesias is doing an awesome job as Talking Points Memo replacement blogger:

...Now I'm not sure where Fred Hiatt lives, but here on the planet earth Democrats have very much been engaged in a debate over Social Security. There's a debate on about whether we should have Social Security or whether it should be phased-out and replaced with something radically different. The White House initiated this debate by proposing that we get rid of Social Security, and Democrats have engaged by saying we should keep it. So far, Democrats are winning this debate...

Yes, Democrats are winning the debate. But Republicans are giving it the old college try:

Senator George Allen (R-VA) may have gotten in a bit over his head, this morning, on Meet the Press. On private accounts, he suggested that Americans might have to sell their homes to survive in retirement. But, that would be a good thing, because they wouldn't have to trim hedges and cut grass, he noted...

But Josh Marshall, regular proprietor of Talking Points Memo, had some good stuff recently too:

There was so much bamboozling going on tonight in that press conference that it was easy to miss one essential contradiction in the president's argument. You don't have to worry about private accounts, he said, because if you want you can fill your account with US Treasury bonds which have no risk at all. They're backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. But he says that the very same Treasury notes, when they're in the Trust Fund, are just worthless IOUs.

(If you'd like to read the contradiction for yourself, here's Bush's April 28 press conference, and here's Bush's speech in West Virginia on April 5.)