“Advocates” Defend Bush’s Borrowing to Address Social Security

This Reuters story tries to give one of those “fair and balanced” discussions but one word tips us off just a wee bit. The story includes:

Facing record budget deficits, the Bush administration likely will turn to short-term government borrowing to help finance its plan to add personal retirement accounts to Social Security, officials said Saturday… One analysis this year by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that tapping the bond markets to pay for private accounts would increase the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio by 23.6 percentage points by 2036. Under this scenario, the debt held by the public would increase by as much as $4.7 trillion.

But then those of us who pay more attention to the total Federal debt might note that the debt held by the public is not the right yardstick assuming the “lock box” is honored. So “fair and balanced” might be in order but this seems to go too far:

While the nation’s debt load would increase initially, it would fall as the reforms are phased in, advocates say…But the new government bonds would be repaid 20 years later, eliminating Social Security’s unfunded liability while reducing the tax burden in the long term, advocates said.

Excuse me for asking but how is reshuffling the chairs on the Titanic going to eliminate the massive Federal insolvency? It seems these “advocates” failed to tell Reuters how, but at least Reuters labeled these folks properly as ADVOCATES (kind term for brazen liars, I guess).