Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) today sent out a press release “blasting” the President for including funds to help incorporate personal accounts into Social Security.  Chairman Baucus recoils at anything that would change the New Deal relic into an actual savings vehicle for Americans. 


So what does Chairman Baucus want to do to address Social Security’s financial disaster?  Here is what the press release says: 


Chairman Baucus has said that efforts to address Social Security’s long-term solvency must focus on ideas that improve the program’s fiscal health without raising taxes or cutting benefits. 


So along with personal accounts, Senator Baucus wants raising taxes and cutting benefits off the table.  In other words, he wants essentially ALL options for reforming Social Security off the table. 


Okay, he has left one option on the table.  I suppose he could be thinking of empowering the government with investing our Social Security money in the private market with our Social Security money–an idea that was was soundly rejected by the Senate in the past.  More likely, Chairman Baucus really doesn’t have any plan to address Social Security’s problems.  He is content to let the program drift towards bankruptcy, which would make tax increases inevitable. 


This is what passes for leadership among Democrats?