A top Social Security administrator is moonlighting as a partial-privatization lobbyist

If there’s an enterprising congressional Democrat out there looking to make a splash in the fight against partial privatization of Social Security, he or she ought to call up James B. Lockhart III, deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), and ask him to come speak at an anti-private accounts rally.
Lockhart, a political appointee and major donor who has given about $20,000 to GOP causes over the past two election cycles, has been appearing at town-hall meetings across the country for the past week with Republican members of Congress, all of whom are pushing President Bush’s privatization agenda.
An interested citizen attending one of these events might have taken away the idea that, by appearing at an event with a lawmaker aggressively pushing privatization, Lockhart was signaling his -- or even the SSA’s -- support of privatization. But Lockhart insists that in all his appearances with pro-privatization Republicans, his role is strictly educational. And, according to the SSA, Lockhart is offering his services to any Democrats who ask for them.