Kemp Says "Cool it"?

Economist's View says pressure is mounting for the White House to drop Social Security reform, and points to a New York Sun column from Jack Kemp (subcription required to read full article), which seems to question the president's plan.

A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that President Bush has a golden opportunity right after Labor Day to advance the ownership society by repealing the death tax and giving working men and women the opportunity to own personal retirement accounts, which would both get a better rate of return and be inheritable by their families. The administration's general position on both issues is well known - it supports both - but where it stands on the legislative strategy remains a mystery. That's a real challenge but a great opportunity.

It is particularly challenging where Social Security is concerned because the president's advisers have insisted that any personal-accounts bill also must guarantee permanent solvency, a simple political impossibility this year. If the president hopes for a legislative success on Social Security, it is essential for him to clear up the mystery. Now is the time to go on record enthusiastically in favor of making a down payment on solvency by stopping the raid on Social Security and devoting payroll tax surpluses to starting personal retirement accounts, an idea being promoted by the Leadership and Ways and Means Committee members in the House and introduced by Jim DeMint, R-S.C., in the Senate.

Then there's a Newsday article suggesting that, according to reports from two think tanks, the House will probably "cast aside" Bush's Social Security proposal.

Economist's View includes a number of other interesting links in his post, and commenter Bruce Webb has some pointed questions that mainly boil down to this:

The numbers don't run for lower income workers. At least no one has ever put a plan on the table that takes comparable numbers for workers making near minimum wage and showing how they would fare. From the very beginning Private Accounts have been sold on fear and the message "something is better than nothing". Well there is still quite a bit of "something" in the current system and it is incumbent on privatizers to bring their own numbers to the table.

Expain precisely how people up and down the income scale would come out on this, that is all.

Anybody care to take that on, and bring some numbers along as well?