Unfortunately, his discussion of Social Security's future lacked those two virtues.

Since its inception, the size of the benefits that Social Security pays to workers and their family members upon retirement, disability or death has depended on individuals' earnings over the course of their careers.

Under Bush's plan, the amount most workers collect from Social Security upon retirement would hinge on the success or failure of their stock and bond investments. Currently guaranteed benefits would be significantly reduced, whether or not you "voluntarily" elect to open a new account. If you do choose to open an account, your guaranteed benefits will be cut even more.

But what would the president cut, and how deep would those cuts be? Bush left those questions open. A more courageous and honest explanation of his proposal would have included the following facts:

Diverting payroll taxes to finance new accounts will make Social Security's long-term stability worse, not better. Social Security's trustees forecast that if nothing is done, the system will be able to pay promised benefits in full until 2042; after that, payroll taxes would cover about 70 percent of promised benefits. That's a shortfall, but not a "bankrupt" system.

Regardless of whether you think the prospect of a 30 percent reduction in benefits 37 years from now constitutes a crisis, diverting up to 4 percentage points (nearly a third) of payroll taxes to private accounts will make that shortfall far more severe and immediate.

Here's why: Today about $4 out of $5 of payroll taxes go immediately to current Social Security beneficiaries; the remaining dollar is used to purchase U.S. Treasury securities held in the system's trust funds to guarantee the payment of future benefits. That arrangement is a result of reforms signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1983, acting on the recommendations of a bipartisan commission chaired by Alan Greenspan.

The deal that Reagan and Greenspan made with American workers was this: We'll raise your payroll taxes in exchange for a guarantee to pay your future Social Security benefits, backed by the trust funds.

That system has worked exactly as planned, but Bush's proposal would break Reagan and Greenspan's promise by draining the trust funds much more rapidly. The trust funds would likely be depleted entirely by 2031, rather than 2042.

Federal debt would explode. To pay for the new accounts while continuing to provide currently promised benefits to individuals ages 55 and over would require enormous levels of new federal borrowing. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities of the president's plan shows that over the first 10 years the plan is in effect, new federal borrowing would amount to more than $1 trillion.

Over the following 10 years, an additional $3.5 trillion would be borrowed, bringing the total to $4.5 trillion over 20 years. That's substantially more than the shortfall forecast for Social Security over the next 75 years.

The 2004 Economic Report of the President concluded that national debt levels would be increased by an amount equal to 23.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product by 2036. That means that 31 years from now, the added debt burden for every man, woman and child would be more than $31,000. And not a cent of that borrowing would do anything to alleviate Social Security's long-term shortfall.

The new debt runs the risk of elevating interest rates and slowing the economy at a time when economic growth will be crucial to help cover the retirement of the baby boomers.

Private accounts would require a new government bureaucracy. Bush said his proposal will be modeled after the Federal Thrift Savings Plan, a retirement system available to government employees. But the original executive director of that plan, Francis Cavanaugh, testified before Congress that extending a similar system to Social Security beneficiaries would require at least 10,000 highly trained federal employees to handle telephone inquiries and answer employee questions. He also noted that the accounts would require the cooperation of millions of private employers, many of whom will face significant new paperwork burdens.

Cavanaugh concluded: "I believe it would be impossible to establish cost-effective 'Thrift Savings Plan'-type Personal Savings Accounts for the Social Security system. That is, the net investment earnings (after administrative expenses) of the Personal Savings Accounts would be less than the net earnings of Social Security trust fund investments in Treasury securities."

Retirees won't be entitled to all of their accounts' earnings. One critical detail of the president's plan that reporters learned about in a background briefing is that workers who open accounts would get to keep only investment returns that exceed the returns that the money would have accrued in the traditional system. That means that upon retirement, workers would be given only money above a 3 percent inflation-adjusted return.

A government official speaking "on background" explained: "In return for the opportunity to get the benefits from the personal account, the person forgoes a certain amount of benefits from the traditional system. Basically, the net effect on an individual's benefits would be zero if his personal account earned a 3 percent real rate of return. To the extent that his personal account gets a higher rate of return, his net benefit would increase."

Many retirees won't be able to bequeath their accounts to their heirs. One of the strongest sales pitches for the president's proposal is that the new accounts could be passed along to the children and grandchildren of beneficiaries after they die. But the plan's details, unmentioned in the speech, reveal that people with little inheritable wealth now won't gain any with private accounts.

That's because they would be required to convert their nest egg into an annuity, which makes monthly payments over the duration of a beneficiary's life. (Annuities would prevent retirees from outliving their entire savings.) Because annuities expire when beneficiaries die, no asset would be available to bequeath to heirs. Mandatory annuitization would apply to anyone at risk of falling below the poverty line; today, about 40 percent of Americans would be living in poverty without Social Security.

Social Security is popular, effective and efficient (with administrative costs below 1 percent). It can be sustained indefinitely with a combination of relatively minor benefit adjustments and tax increases without undercutting the features that have made it so successful. Let's move ahead with courage and honesty.

Greg Anrig, Jr., is vice president of programs at The Century Foundation. This article originally appeared in Newark Star-Ledger on February 6, 2005.