Imagine getting a certificate in the mail from the government saying: "Do not be alarmed! You WILL NOT lose your home." I’m guessing that you’d be a little alarmed.

Well, that’s just the beginning of what’s wrong with the latest ridiculous idea from Washington D.C. about how we should start privatizing the Social Security system.

The idea proposed by House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) is to mail every Social Security recipient a certificate guaranteeing that future benefits will not be cut. His hope is that this will both reassure recipients and inoculate from criticism those who want to start diverting a portion on Social Security withholdings into private investment accounts. Critics of this plan have argued that the only way to pay for these private accounts is through benefit cuts or tax increases.

If I’m a Social Security recipient— and fully one in six Americans are—imagine how alarmed I would be to get a government certificate saying, "don’t worry." I didn’t know there was reason to worry. I paid into the program all my life and I was already guaranteed my benefits.

If I’m just about to retire and I don’t get my certificate, I’m even more alarmed. In fact, I’m angry.

Even worse than hollow reassurances that only create anxiety is the truth about Social Security privatization: it jeopardizes the entire foundation of one of the greatest government success stories in U.S. history.

There was a time in this country when the poverty rate among the elderly was double that of the population as a whole. Now it has fallen to lower than 10%, considerably lower than the overall national figure. Social Security is the reason. Today, more than half of the elderly would have incomes below the poverty line were it not for Social Security. Studies have shown that Social Security lifts more Americans out of poverty than all other government programs combined.

But what Rep. Armey, President Bush and other privatizers ignore when comparing "returns" from our Social Security investment with that of the stock market is that the program is so much more than just savings for retirement. It is a social contract between generations of Americans that guarantees benefits not just when we are older, but if something happens to us before then.

It’s not just savings, it’s disability insurance and it’s life insurance.

That’s why more than three million children are among Social Security’s beneficiaries. Thousands of children lost a working parent on Sept. 11. In fact, hundreds of children lose a working parent every day in this country. The majority of those children will receive Social Security checks every month until they are 18, significant supplemental income for their families whether their lost loved one was a corporate executive or a custodian.

There are other reasons why Social Security is nothing like a savings account. The taxes we pay into it aren’t going into some kind of a, say, "lockbox" to wait until we need it. It goes right back out the door to pay for the benefits of current beneficiaries, those of the previous generation. And we expect our sons and daughters to do the same to guarantee our benefits when our time comes.

The difference between what we pay in and pay right back out used to be called the "Social Security surplus." Now it’s just called "spent."

The federal government’s non-Social Security budget surplus has disappeared, so we are in no position to infuse cash into the system either to ensure the program’s long-term solvency, or to cover the cost of diverting a massive chunk of the money out of the system into private accounts. In fact, our federal government continues to "borrow" from Social Security funds to pay for last year’s tax cuts and those scheduled over the next 10 years.

To suggest you can divert $1 trillion in Social Security taxes into private accounts and still meet obligations to the current generation of retirees is pure fantasy. To send a piece of paper in the mail saying "trust us" is not just fantasy, it’s criminally irresponsible.

If the privatizers have a plan that pays for itself, let’s see it. President Bush’s handpicked Social Security commission assigned to the task last year couldn’t do it without making benefit cuts or tax increases, or both. So instead of issuing a proposal as requested, the commission put out a confusing jumble of "recommendations" and quietly disappeared back into the lecture circuit.

The fact is, there is no privatization proposal that adds up. Those who support the idea don’t have a plan, they just have election talking points about you investing your own money to earn more than the government can. When President Bush said he didn’t want to get into any "fuzzy math" during the presidential debates, he wasn’t kidding. He doesn’t want to get into any math.

There. I made it through an entire column about Social Security privatization without once mentioning Enron.

Doh!