Unpublished op/ed written in June 2000.

As the public debate over privatizing Social Security has intensified, I have been thinking about my own personal journey down the path of privatization. I began with fascination, which led to exploration, then apprehension, and ultimately rejection.

At the outset I was attracted by privatization proposals that seemed to promise taxpayers more control over their Social Security, higher returns on their contributions, and more income for their retirement.

But ultimately I turned away from privatization because the promises and the numbers supporting them don't add up, and, more importantly, they don't add on to the security of Social Security. In fact, I concluded that privatization would likely make our most important social safety net less safe, while doing little if anything to actually benefit beneficiaries.

To reach this conclusion is not to deny that Social Security has real problems. The baby boom generation will swamp the system relatively soon and outnumber the workers paying into it. If we do not prepare for this demographic crunch, we could jeopardize the program's stability.

According to the actuaries, the Social Security surplus is projected to run out in 2015, at which point we will have to start borrowing money from the Treasury to pay benefit checks. The whole system is set to run out of money in 2037 – right as my children and millions of others approach retirement age.

We are not on the verge of a meltdown, but we clearly have some work to do to stabilize and modernize Social Security for the future. It is also clear that there are no easy answers, so as I began to consider the issue, and the stakes involved, I was open to a wide range of alternatives.

I was also eager for policies that could help expand and equalize savings in our country. For all our economic robustness, we have a pitiful savings rate, which puts our future prosperity in peril. As a result of that poor savings rate, we also have a widening wealth gap, which is exacerbating the already serious divisions in our asset-based economy.

The proponents of privatization seemed to offer a convenient solution to both problems -- set aside a portion of Social Security payroll taxes to seedbed private investment accounts. Today's workers would see their accounts grow into a healthy retirement nest egg, and our economy would see the savings rate go up and the wealth gap go down.

So why in the end did I find it unacceptable?

First, I thought about the fundamental mission of Social Security. Retirement security has often been described as a three-legged stool, comprised of personal savings, pensions, and Social Security. The first two are built on a person's success on the job and in the securities markets, and thus rise and fall with personal earning power and Wall Street swings. Social Security is supposed to be different. It is the one totally stable leg of the stool, guaranteeing all who pay in a minimum income in retirement. In fact, it is the major source of income for 63 percent of seniors, and the only thing that separates 42 percent of the elderly from poverty. The more I weighed these facts, the more reluctant I became to tamper with the program's basic structure.

Then I considered the mechanics of meshing the existing system with privatization. Social Security is primarily a pay-as-you-go program, meaning payroll taxes taken in now are tapped now for benefit checks. Today five of every six dollars coming in are distributed immediately to beneficiaries, and the rest is accumulating to handle the coming surge of boomer retirees.

Most of the privatization plans being discussed would change the underlying equation. They typically divert two percent of the 12.4 percent of the FICA payroll tax -- $952 billion over the next 10 years -- into a new pool for private accounts, and thereby substantially reduce the funds available to pay benefits.

Lastly, I examined the consequences of this transition. If this two percent is diverted, the entire Social Security surplus would be depleted and the trust fund would go broke 14 years earlier -- before I retire rather than before my children do. That is fact, not fearmongering.

It is also a fact that by taking this money out the Social Security trust fund, we will precipitate a solvency crisis that will soon force us to either raise taxes or cut benefits to make up for the lost revenue. Neither of those are politically realistic choices.

For all that risk, retirees probably wouldn't even get to reap the rewards. Privatization advocates don't often mention this, but because of the transition costs, many of their plans cut Social Security benefits in proportion to returns on the private accounts as a way of plugging the revenue hole.

And what if those private investments go bad? The cost of bailing them out would inevitably fall onto the federal government. Even if we are talking about one tenth of the upfront funding – nearly $1 trillion – the charge to the Treasury would run to more than $90 billion.

I came away feeling that, taken together, these costs and risks were at once too much and too little. Too much of a threat to Social Security's stability and our federal fiscal balance. Too much risk to today's and tomorrow's senior citizens. And too little of a payoff to America's retirees to justify such an expensive experiment.

That is where and why my private privatization journey ended. But I have not stopped searching for solutions to Social Security's serious problems. Privatization may be a medicine that is worse than the disease, but we cannot expect Social Security to heal on its own.

A good place to start would be to use a portion of the general budget surplus to accelerate our debt repayments and then plow the interest savings back into Social Security. This move would buttress the trust fund without costing taxpayers a dime. But we should also be prepared to consider a few less politically painless options. My colleague Pat Moynihan, for instance, argues for updating the cost of living index to make it more accurate. And if the forecasts do not improve, former CBO director Robert Reischauer suggests we may have no choice but to raise the retirement age and the payroll tax.

At the same time, we should be looking at the big picture, at the larger retirement needs of our citizens, and for new ways to supplement the safety net of Social Security. Vice President Gore has put forward a creative proposal to do just that with his Retirement Savings Plus plan, which would provide low-income families with their own 401(k) plans with matching government funds to help them build wealth for their old age.

So have Senator Bob Kerrey and I with our Kidsave plan, which would provide every child with $1,000 in seed money for each of the first five years of their lives, and thus help them start developing a nest egg before they've left the nest.

These proposals, like the privatization plans, would capitalize on capitalism to help the elderly and the asset-less. But not at the expense of Social Security – the greatest social insurance program ever created. To do that, to paraphrase a great member of the "greatest generation," would most definitely not be prudent.