Democrats to kill 401(k)s for … privatized Social Security?

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - In 2005, George Bush proposed privatizing a portion of Social Security contributions to allow workers to control their own funds and hopefully outperform the woefully inadequate entitlement system. The partial privatization would eventually have helped postpone or eliminate the insolvency of Social Security, but Democrats screeched that the GOP wanted to steal benefits from Grandma and effectively killed the debate. To this day, they accuse Republican candidates of supporting Bush’s partial privatization plan as though it were the equivalent of Teapot Dome.

So why are Democrats now looking to partially nationalize existing 401(k) plans into the exact same kind of private/public pension system?

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.