Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast. Today is Wednesday, March 21st. This is your host Anastasia Glova.

Cato's project on Social Security Choice has been advocating reform and private accounts long before President Bush took up the mantle in 2004. The President's plan

failed but William Shippman, co-chairman of the project on Social Security

Choice at Cato and now Social Security Advisor in Sam Brownback's presidential campaign published

an up-ed in the Washington Times last week that signals that at least he is

ready to revive the debate. What makes you bring up Social Security reform after it died such a painful death in 2004?

Well, it didn't die a painful death actually in 2004, which some people say, and here's why.

President Bush ran on Social Security Reform in 2004 and he ran quite aggressively on it.

He won and then in his State of the union address in January of 2005 he devoted about

twenty percent of that address to social security reform to the best of my knowledge

unprecedented coverage for domestic economic policy issue in a State of the

Union address.

In the State of the Union address in 2006, he devoted eight sentences to it.

What happened is that the oxygen during that year came out of Social Security

formal or elsewhere.

And the reasons are many.

One reason, I think think is that in his promoting Social Security reform he never

gave to the American public specifically what that reform would be. We really had no idea what we were signing up for.

Well, it was privatized accounts.

Yes, but that in and of itself is not enough.

Does it mean that you have this privatized account over and above Social Security, it replaced Social Security,

are there any guarantees, are there any certainties, do you have to know how to manage money

...