As Rudyard Kipling once put it, when man propounds negotiations and accepts compromise, "very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact to its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act." More's the pity in the debate over Social Security reform. Raising the $90,000 cap on which Social Security taxes are paid appears to be squarely on the negotiating table. It's the price Republicans might have to pay in order to create partially privatized, individual accounts, says Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. Surely, the devil must be laughing. Far from "reform," raising the cap will create an entirely new set of problems that will make matters far worse. Not only will it buy this unsustainable pyramid scheme woefully few years of pretend "solvency," it will do great damage to families and the economy. To wit, millions of middle-class families would pay more than $2,600 in higher taxes annually if the cap were raised to $140,000, according to a Heritage Foundation analysis. Eliminating the cap entirely, as some have proposed, would result in the largest tax increase in American history, the think tank says -- nearly a half--trillion dollars in the first five years. And over 10 years, Heritage says cap elimination would cost the economy about $136 billion in growth and the loss of more than 1.1 million new jobs. Quite a "fix," isn't it.

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