WASHINGTON
AS ALWAYS, even with an 800-pound gorilla like Social Security, there is a third way - especially when the first two ways have lost large chunks of their economic and political viability.
Between the lines of President Bush's Social Security Commission's almost final report there are the first signs of the intellectual independence that was missing when Bush made the initial mistake of packing it solely with known advocates of private investment accounts.
The result - though this optimism requires a final report with more specificity next month - is the first possibility of a continuing discussion by rational people instead of the familiar shouting match now largely mooted by deteriorating economic and federal budget facts of life.
Until last week those facts had rendered moribund Bush's poorly articulated dream for private accounts financed out of current payroll taxes paid equally by workers and their employers. The faith in stock markets is not exactly what it used to be, and the enormous transition costs (at least a trillion dollars) for such a system are simply not payable under foreseeable circumstances.
But it's also true that the same realities have made the typical Democratic counter - Social Security will be fine as long as its surpluses are sequestered and additional revenue pumped in - just as out of date. The rest of the government's surpluses are gone because of plummeting revenues from a sick economy and ill-considered income tax cuts. That means, as things stand now, the system is still assumed to begin running an operating deficit in 15 years and to run out of reserves (as in go belly up) in the year 2038.
Also until last week, the standard debate about Social Security and private investment accounts often boiled down to a debate between those shouting ''carve out'' (meaning take revenues from payroll taxes now used to pay current benefits) and those shouting ''add on'' (meaning get the money from tax or other incentives that don't touch that payroll tax flow).
The intriguing option presented by the commission last week - in addition to two rather typical carve-outs - tries to create a hybrid. It is missing a great many details, but it has the potential of keeping the conversation going. And that, given the enormous importance of the topic to every working and retired person in the country, is worthwhile all by itself.
As my colleague, Sue Kirchhoff, noted in a typically perceptive summary, the commission's policy options ''mixed the promise of private investment accounts with the pain of sharply lower guaranteed benefits, slimmer payments for early retirees and, despite White House orders to the contrary, possible tax increases.'' But Kirchhoff also honed in on the observation of an active, outside-the-box commission member, vice chairman Robert Pozen of Fidelity Investments, that the idea was also to make the system more progressive for low- and moderate-income workers and to provide both a miniumum, guaranteed benefit and greater protection for surviving spouses.
And there's more. The third-way option would begin with the individual, with an add-on. The required ante would be 1 percent of income, and there are ways (refundable credits, for example) to help low-income workers assemble their stake.
After the 1 percent add-on, the option then goes the carve-out route - a 2.5 percent of income match from payroll taxes.
There would for those who joined be a corresponding 2.5 percent drop in the value of the basic Social Security benefit, and new ways of calculating increases that would be less generous than current law. But there could also be an increase in benefits for those at the bottom so that by 2018 the system could guarantee a basic benefit at least equal to the poverty rate; and surviving spouses - a huge, vulnerable population - could get at least 75 percent of the benefits couples do.
There are many questions still unanswered, many details still to be filled in. But this option speaks to the concerns of all sides and therefore is worth fleshing out.
The problem is not going away, and therefore neither will the need to discuss a solution.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.
Founders meant 'the militia'
