Free Republic

America's fiscal need for entitlement reform is pushing the discussion about Social Security inexorably toward "means testing," a policy both the left and the right have long avoided. Both sides realize that means testing, namely reducing or eliminating payments from the program to higher income senior citizens, would recast Social Security from its current perception by citizens as a retirement program to one of outright redistribution or welfare. Many Americans see Social Security as a savings plan, albeit a coerced one, and a recent poll by the AARP (which certainly knows how to write poll questions geared to suggest as...

A registered Democrat, Robert Pozen has little to gain politically from the Social Security solvency plan that he drafted and that now is heralded by President Bush, whom the former Massachusetts economic development chief voted against in November. Nonetheless, Pozen has become a favorite witness at congressional hearings, promoting his idea of "progressive indexing" for future benefits. At age 58, Pozen has no personal stake in the current Social Security debate because neither President Bush nor Congress has advocated changing the existing system for workers over 55. It's a fair bet, too, that Pozen, a graduate of Harvard College and...

The intellectual force behind President Bush's plan to overhaul Social Security, the man the president calls his favorite "Democrat economist," is not an economist. He is Robert C. Pozen, a lawyer and mutual fund executive who serves as chairman of MFS Investment Management in Boston. A registered Democrat, Mr. Pozen donated money to the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry last year and voted for him on Nov. 2. He was a classmate of Hillary Rodham Clinton at Yale Law School. But all that has not stopped President Bush from embracing Mr. Pozen's main idea to bring the nation's public...