Today, FactCheck.org — a website run by UPenn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center — lambastes critics of President Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme for suggesting that his plan would be a “windfall” for Wall Street. They base their criticism entirely on new data about the administrative costs of Federal Thrift Savings Plans, which they claim are the model for the Bush proposal.
I guess they missed this article in today’s Washington Post:
Bush’s proposed accounts differ substantially from the 19-year-old TSP [Thrift Savings Plan]. Moreover, they would be much more difficult to run than the TSP and have far higher administrative costs than the president and his supporters let on, some experts say.
[snip]
“It’s not really like TSP at all,” said James Sauber, chairman of the Employee Thrift Advisory Council, a 15-member panel of representatives from federal labor and managerial organizations.
[snip]
The White House acknowledges that there are many differences between the TSP and the proposed accounts, and that Bush’s system would be more expensive to run.