Is President Bush suggesting that he wants to phase out traditional Social Security entirely? From the New York Times today:

In the interview on Tuesday, Mr. Bush suggested that he foresees the plan to divert 4 percent of earnings into private accounts as a first step toward a longer range transformation of Social Security.

“The relevant question there is how best to afford the transition from one system to another,” he told reporters from The Orange County Register, The New Haven Register, The Birmingham News, The Tennessean of Nashville and The South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “It’s a feasible place to start to enable us to introduce a novel concept into a Social Security system that needs to be reformed.”