There was good news for supporters of personal accounts last week when President Bush included Social Security reform in his FY09 budget, as he has in previous years' budgets. CQ Politics offered some explanation of Bush's proposal, which couples personal accounts with progressive indexing:

Say this about George W. Bush , the man is persistent. Three years after his plan to overhaul Social Security capsized under the weight of opposition from older voters and congressional Democrats, the president is still plotting a timetable to revamp the system.

The administration’s fiscal 2009 budget, released last week, revives the most controversial aspect of Bush’s plan: allowing younger workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in private retirement accounts beginning in 2013, five years after Bush leaves office. He estimates that it would cost the government $647.2 billion over 10 years.

(...)David C. John, a senior research fellow and Social Security expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, says the timetable laid out in the budget actually is quite realistic, because it would take several years to work out details such as who would manage millions of small accounts and how to explain the new investment choices.