Al Gore Was Right...sorta.

The answer to Social Security reform IS a lockbox. A lockbox in the form of a Personal Retirement Account. Donald Luskin of NRO sums it up nicely:

The fact is that personal accounts are nothing less than a Social Security lockbox. Yes, a lockbox — what Al Gore went on and on about in the 2000 election.
It’s obvious when you think about it. When your payroll tax dollars go into your own personal account — which you can invest in private markets, and in which you have heritable property rights — that account is a lockbox. Government can’t spend the money in there, because it’s yours, and you’ve invested it. (emphasis mine)

Under the current system, some of your tax dollars pay for the benefits of today’s retirees. Whatever’s left over goes into the Social Security Trust Funds, which use the money to buy Treasury bonds. That means, effectively, that the Trust Funds get an IOU from the general fund of the government — and the government gets to spend the money.

Sure, as the Left always points out, those IOUs are legitimate moral claims on the government, just like any Treasury bond. But they don’t represent actual savings — because the government spends the money the moment it receives the money. When it comes time to redeem the bonds in the Trust Funds to pay benefits, the government will have to either tax or borrow to raise the needed money.

To me, the most important point is that the Government cannot spend the money you put into your Personal Retirement Account. That's all I need to hear to know I want Social Security changed now. Read the rest of Luskin's argument here.