The New America Foundation is the home to many of the best progressive minds in the country. Unfortunately, that same institution just put out a "nonpartisan Social Security Reform plan" that would divert a share of payroll taxes into private accounts while severely cutting guaranteed benefits across all income levels.

Geez,  thanks for reopening that can of worms, guys!

Without getting into all the details of the proposal, I'll just note that it requires workers to pay an additional 1.5 percent in payroll taxes while raising the ceiling on earned income subject to the payroll tax. Those two changes alone would be much more than enough to cover Social Security's projected long-term shortfall. But the authors go beyond that to reduce guaranteed benefits substantially and hope that the new accounts financed by the higher and diverted taxes will be more than enough to make up the difference.

What's the point of introducing market risk if raising the taxes alone would address Social Security's shortfall? The authors say that walling off the funds in the accounts from the rest of the government (now in the form of the existing trust funds) would "increase the likelihood that they would contribute to national saving." Hmmm, that dubious connection sounds like something that Martin Feldstein would say. And wouldn't you know it, two of the three authors of the New America report—Andrew Samwick and Jeffrey Liebman—had previously co-authored privatization plans with Feldstein. Dr. Feldstein, of course, is the supply sider whose years of privatization work essentially laid in ruins after the past year's analysis of similar plans by the Congressional Budget Office, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and even the Office of Management and Budget.

In any case, now the right can seize on the opportunity provided by New America to say that even a vibrant new progressive institution supports privatization. Of course, the conservative groups will never buy into a payroll tax increase. But that doesn't matter to them. New America has dutifully served their purposes.

At the outset of the New America proposal, the authors write, "the three of us—former aides to President Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush—did an experiment to see if we could develop a reform plan that we all could support." Please. All three (New America's Maya MacGuineas is the third) have long supported privatization. That's the kind of disingenuousness that characterizes today's conservative movement. An institution that calls itself progressive has no business behaving the same way.

Greg Anrig, Jr., is vice president for programs at The Century Foundation.