Laura Bush's Coming-Out Party

Richard W. Stevenson writes in the International Herald Tribune: "The White House and its allies are seeking to build a sense of momentum for President George W. Bush's plan to cut federal benefits to future generations of retirees, who he says will be better off than if Congress fails to act and Social Security ultimately runs short of money to pay full benefits."

Jake Tapper writes for ABC News: "President Bush has proven to be one of the more adept and agile politicians of the modern era. Time and again, he and his political team have shown the ability to turn potential political vulnerabilities -- think 9/11 -- into weapons deftly applied to opponents. . . .

"Could voters come to see this as courage, especially if Democrats are offering no serious alternative solutions?"

Social Security Watch

Bush hasn't expanded on his very short, carefully worded endorsement of "progressive indexing" at Thursday's prime-time press conference.

On Friday, at an event in suburban Virginia, and then again in his Saturday radio address , all Bush would say about that is that "benefits for low-income workers should grow faster than benefits for people who are better off."

Reporters are trying their best to describe what precisely it is that the president appears to be advocating.

That's not necessarily so easy, writes Joel Havemann in the Los Angeles Times. "The latest wrinkle in President Bush's plan to shore up Social Security's finances follows a familiar pattern: Bush and his opponents can't agree on the most basic facts.

"This time, the two sides are at loggerheads over whether the president, in his effort to guarantee the system's solvency, would cut retirees' benefits."

But here's Larry Eichel explaining it nicely in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "On Thursday night, President Bush announced that he'd like to balance Social Security's books by having retirement benefits grow more slowly for the better-off than for people with lower incomes.

"He was endorsing, at least in principle, an idea called 'progressive indexing,' the brainchild of a Boston-based investment executive named Robert C. Pozen.

"And progressive indexing, if enacted, would have a dramatic impact on the vast majority of working Americans.