Democrats Suddenly Want To Privatize Social Security

Democrats want to end the tax breaks you and I receive by contributing to privately-invested retirement accounts and use those proceeds to create a new government-run retirement entitlement that we’d all be required to contribute to:

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

If you’re thinking that sounds like Social Security, you’re right. In fact, what Democrats are proposing here is ending tax breaks for private retirement investments in order to fund the sort of semi-privatized Social Security accounts the Bush administration tried to get passed in 2005:

A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Miller’s Education and Labor Committee on her proposal. . . .
Under Ghilarducci’s plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.
The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

So we get private Social Security accounts, but only at the expense of more spending on Social Security in general and an end to tax breaks for private retirement investment.
The end result would be fewer people saving for their own retirements and more government dependence. Which is exactly what liberals want, right? Less people taking care of themselves, and more people dependent on the government.