Paul Krugman, it seems, will use any argument to bad-mouth Social Security reform. He once wrote, correctly (but intending it as a criticism), that

private accounts will at best have a "net neutral effect" - that is, they will do nothing to improve Social Security's finances. Mr. Bush says the system faces a crisis; what does he propose to do about it?

But Krugman has also written that

As soon as voters heard that privatization would involve benefit cuts, support for Social Security "reform" plunged.

The second statement contradicts the first: if privatization were to involve benefit cuts (and Krugman implies that what “voters heard” is correct), it would do something to improve Social Security’s finances. Benefit cuts would reduce the looming gap between promised benefits and scheduled tax revenues.

Last week, distinct from his fiscally neutral proposal for personal retirement accounts, President Bush proposed to do something about the funding gap: a “progressive” form of re-indexation that would cut more from the future benefits of high-income workers than from the benefits of low-income workers. So is Krugman pleased? Of course not. In his latest column, Krugman writes:

Sure enough, a close look at President Bush's proposal for "progressive price indexing" of Social Security puts the lie to claims that it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing.

Who ever claimed that it was a plan to increase benefits for the poor? Nobody I’ve read, and Krugman names no names. But by making that “claim” the benchmark, the proponents of the plan are painted as dishonest liars. And why is it a lie that the plan would cut benefits for the wealthy?

because people with high incomes don't depend on Social Security benefits.

Oh, so it isn’t a lie. It’s simply that because Social Security benefits are such a small percentage of their retirement incomes (only 1%) to begin with, even cutting benefits to zero wouldn’t cause much of a loss as a percentage of their total incomes. One can only imagine Krugman’s outrage if benefits to retired millionaires were large enough to add more than 1% to their incomes.

Krugman concludes with this flourish:

The important thing to understand is that the attempt to turn Social Security into nothing but a program for the poor isn't driven by concerns about the future budget burden of benefit payments. After all, if Mr. Bush was worried about the budget, he would be reconsidering his tax cuts.

No, this is about ideology: Mr. Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it.

Yes, this is about ideology -- on both sides of the debate. Krugman's ideology calls for higher taxes. Social Security reformers are driven, not by concerns about the future "budget burden" in Krugman's sense (for which higher taxes are a "solution"), but by concerns about holding the line on the future tax burden of benefit payments.