Mark Stern

Professor of Social Welfare and History

University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work

President Bush's plan for revamping social security has gone from "bad to worse," Stern says.

"Social Security has been a spectacularly successful program because it got the balance right between Americans' belief, rooted in market principles, that benefits should be earned and that pooling risk is a prudent way of dealing with life's uncertainties.  

"Bush's Plan B successfully undermines both of these principles.  By doing so, it seeks to substitute an unworkable and unproven system for one that has demonstrated its effectiveness for the past 70 years," he says.