A Golden Nest Egg.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)

Social Security: With a pack of political wolves already nipping at his heels, President Bush has outlined his plan for private retirement accounts.

Thursday's announcement took courage and leadership, two qualities sorely lacking in the White House since Ronald Reagan left office. Bush will get no relief from attacks, though. Political opponents who think they have a juicy issue and the grudging, militant defenders of the doomed Social Security system will mount a relentless offensive. They'll call Bush's plan a gimmick, mislead an uninformed public, wage generational and class warfare, assemble mobs and exploit a sympathetic media.

They'll do everything but speak the truth, which is: Privatizing Social Security, even partially, is exactly what the country needs.

"Short of war," begins Wade Dokken's "New Century, New Deal," "no issue government can affect will touch the lives of the American people more than reforming Social Security. It is the single most important personal finance issue of our time, and the time for change has come."

The Social Security train is running on schedule and will be right on time for its 2016 crash. At that point, the trust fund will fall into the red, sending out more in benefits than it's taking in from payroll taxes.

"To maintain benefits after the system begins running a deficit in 2016, the government must acquire new funds equivalent to $103 per worker," Michael Tanner, a top Social Security expert, wrote in a recent Cato Institute paper. "By 2030 the tax burden increases to $1,543 per worker, and it continues to rise thereafter."

If those gaps aren't covered, Social Security will have a deficit of roughly $21 trillion by 2075, -- a shortfall more than twice the size of our current economy. The tax hikes required to keep the checks moving would wreck the economy in the last half of the century. How high will the ...