I forgot Social Security. The fact that he is talking about it at all means that what he said in the campaign was a trial balloon. Since the balloon did not pop in his face, we will likely get an increased cap, with an even higher rate for higher income earners. I don't think Charley Rangel will go with the doughnut hole in the system - nor will Max Baucus. Hopefully this President is really listening, or at least his OMB Director looks at this blog. If so, they should consider a more drastic reform. Along with raising the cap and adding a more progressive rate at the top, credit employer contributions for all full-time employees at an average of all these contributions and then do away with the progressive bends on the benefits side. Instead, calculate benefits based on individual contributions and the average employer contribution (part-timers would get some arbitrary percentage of the full-time amount). This would take away some of the unease over personal accounts, since the amount in the account could be some percentage of the contributions to date without making the poor worse off. Of course, the redistribution at the front side would really irritate conservatives, whose goal in supporting personal accounts was less some desire for higher yields (since these cannot be gauranteed, as the current crash indicates). Rather, their main objection was the redistributive features of the system. In online discussion boards over the last decade that this issue has been debated, the thing that really raised howls among conservatives was my proposal to equalize employer contributions at the front end. By the way, to avoid the danger of a speculative collapse, creating personal accounts where employers contribute a portion of their taxes to an ESOP or other employee ownership fund - or just grant voting shares to employees on an equal basis (with regulations to ensure no one misvalues their shares and an insurance fund so that a portion of these shares are contributed by all participating companies in order to repay losses in cases of insolvency). Note that the system I just described would undo the system which caused the bailout as more and more firms go private, especially if these private funds also provided mortgages for their employees, rather than have them go independently to banks or brokers. There would be no NINJA mortgages or toxic ARM-A's. Of course, the financial sector would not like this plan, especially since at the current moment share prices are at fire sale levels (which is an argument FOR privatization).