The president, now a "compassionate conservative," advances the cause of "privatizing" Social Security

Roth IRA the model for Obama's contractor retirement plan

It was GW's idea and it was already a lie to even use the word, "privatization."

Those who supported his plan to partially defund, weaken, and replace the totally safe and mildly re-distributive Social Security program by letting people redirect part of their Social Security taxes toward personal IRAs, personal savings, rather than into the Social Security fund, called it "partial privatization."

Now, the devil is in the details, but what the president has done is direct the Treasury Department to create a plan allowing workers whose employers provide nothing for retirement to automatically save some of their own after-tax dollars.

The money would be guaranteed by the government, and so as safe as a savings account.

Not in the least clear how this is better than the private savings plans available right now through banks all over the country.

If that's really the long and short of it, what the president has done has been to advance the conservative cause of destroying Social Security by attempting to deal with the problem of retirement for the least well off among us by telling the poor, save up.

Expect Republicans to urge that the money to be saved should be exempt from Social Security taxes, thus ensuring the program also partially defunds Social Security, though it appears not to do that under the president's own plan.

All the same, FDR created Social Security to safely and effectively provide a small but secure pension for the poorest of Americans, with the worst retirement prospects, as well as aid for younger Americans in exceptionally desperate circumstances.

Want to do more along those lines for workers today who can expect nothing from their employers?

Beef up Social Security.

Strengthen its funding and increase its benefits.

Social Security is the right tool. It just needs to be made a better tool.

Of course, the president might reply that such changes are up to the congress and the congress will certainly not make them.

That is true.

Perhaps he has it in mind he can get approval for this idea from the congress.

But in that case he has refused to urge a properly Democratic plan (fixing Social Security) because a Republican congress won't pass it, and instead urged a plan for Republican acceptance whose only point, in their hands, will be to undermine, defund, and help ultimately wreck Social Security.

Not having been allowed to function as a Democratic president, he is now willingly accepting the role of Republican successor to GW, carrying on his destructive work as a "compassionate conservative."

The mind of Obama is certainly a tough nut to crack.