Mr. Bush also refused to say how much benefits might be reduced for workers who created private investment accounts.
Mr. Rauh and a number of other analysts say the states' biggest problem has been a failure to understand how much benefits will really cost.
There's also a limit to how much benefits can be cut and taxes increased (most politicians will not leave their elderly population destitute), so at a certain point paying entitlements could mean other obligations are not paid.
Many of today's troubled public pension funds got that way through missteps that, while harmful, do not necessarily constitute fraud: overly rosy investment assumptions, failure to take into account that Americans are living longer, and bad calls about how much benefits actually cost.
When I ask Noel, who now works as a teacher in an international further education college, how much benefits were part of the "pull factor" in bringing him to Britain, he scoffs.
Nobody who has aspirations of leading the Green Party to victory writes a book called I'm Only Being Honest... in which he earnestly wonders whether the UK needs a "booze report" to investigate how much benefits claimants spend on alcohol.
