WASHINGTON -- Al Gore stands accused of having made a retirement income proposal almost one month to the day after George W. Bush is said to have made his, an accusation that will no doubt weigh heavily on voters four-plus months from now.
Let Gore plead guilty, and then send everyone to the charts to see how much better off they'll be, if they aren't blessed with six-figure incomes. As always, a useful way of examining a proposal is through the principal attack points used by the opposition - in Governor Bush's case, three:
1. Gore's proposal to create individual investment accounts as a supplement to, not a partial replacement of, Social Security, does nothing to get Social Security through its lean years of fewer workers and more retired beneficiaries.
Wrong.
Gore's proposal is actually made feasible by his much earlier proposals and commitments about the budget surplus and Social Security itself, ideas that resemble those advanced during the Republican primary season by John McCain.
Specifically, you can keep Social Security solvent and avoid slashing the benefits structure if you do three things: Put maintaining an operating budget surplus at the top of your priority list; don't blow the non-Social Security budget surplus on income tax cuts that slash the top rates on the highest incomes; don't use the surplus within the Social Security system for any purpose other than shoring up that system as we know it; and above all don't touch it to fund the establishment of investment accounts.
It you avoid those Bush goofs, non-Social Security deficits cannot eat up the Social Security surpluses as they did during the 1980s and nearly all of the 1990s; and all of the Social Security surpluses will accumulate untouched. You can then give the system an added boost by dedicating to it the ridiculous sums spent from the general fund to pay interest on a national debt that could be eliminated in a dozen years.
That has immense implications for Social Security, all positive. As things stand, demographic pressures are projected to collapse the system in 2037. With non-Bush fiscal responsibility, soundness extends past midcentury, at which point most baby boomers will be pushing up daisies.
By contrast, if you take the trillion or so out of Social Security it would take to set up the investment accounts, you make the day of solvency reckoning and benefits cuts inescapable as well as hasten it by a good 14 years.
2. Gore's proposal would force lower-income workers to ante up their own scarce dollars to get the three-for-one government match for his accounts. Because Bush wants to shift some of existing Social Security revenue, the up-front cost to people with modest incomes would be zero.
Partly right, mostly wrong. For up to $30,000 in income, each individual or each spouse in a couple could ante up $250 a year in order to get the full match in the form of a refundable tax credit. After that there would be a sliding scale, with a cutoff at $100,000. It is not unreasonable to imagine workers flocking to an opportunity to accumulate a nest egg for retirement that would be in addition to untouched Social Security income.
In a study by the Century Foundation, a couple making $30,000 annually and saving $10 a week in a conservative fund and getting the full match, could accumulate more than $400,000 over 35 years on top of the $15,877 Social Security would provide. The great canard in this ''debate'' is that Gore's proposal should be compared to ''the Bush plan.''
Nice idea, except for one problem: There is no Bush plan. It's amazing how a false notion can be spread by repetition, but that's what the governor has done. To date, he has uttered not one noteworthy syllable beyond the notion of ''individually controlled, voluntary accounts.''
Bush won't say what amount should be taken out of Social Security revenue to fund the accounts; he won't say what the accounts will cost to administer or how he would make up the huge shortfall in the revenue that is used to pay current benefits, or what the age cut-off is for the ''near-retirees'' he would exempt from benefits cuts, or what the extent of benefits cuts would be for everyone not exempted. And he won't say what the extent of benefits cuts would be for those who choose to have investment accounts.
The reason is that getting specific as Gore did would expose the truth: Robbing Peter (current revenues) to pay Paul (investment accounts) would produce lower, net retirement income for people of average means because of the cuts in future Social Security benefits, and it would cut Social Security benefits for a huge chunk of the baby boom generation who would have no time to enjoy the cash earned from investment accounts.
3. The Gore proposal is an attempt to establish another federal entitlement program to be funded by income taxpayers.
Absolutely right. This bit of conservative cant excites the ideologically fervent and no one else. Gore is indeed proposing a means of increasing national savings, and promoting wealth, outside the Social Security system for any worker who chooses to take advantage of it.
For good measure, he is also proposing that access to affordable prescription drugs be made an automatic part of Medicare for everyone. These are new entitlements adding to our system of social insurance, and can happen as long as precious resources aren't diverted from Social Security revenue and from general revenue by slashing income tax rates on the highest incomes.
There is now a full Gore proposal. Let's see if Bush, the real Man With No Plan, dares counter.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
