House Democrats will have to try harder at pension reform than the half-baked plan their leader, Nancy Pelosi, unveiled Tuesday on Capitol Hill. They might start with actually addressing the crisis facing Social Security. Nibbling around the edges of private sector pension plans, as they currently propose, isn’t enough.

The Democrats’ “AmeriSave” program would function as an add-on to an unreformed Social Security system. Participants in the program would receive government matching funds of up to $1,000 invested in an individual retirement account or 401(k) each year. Small businesses would receive tax credits to cover the costs associated with offering 401(k) benefits, and a separate tax credit to help pay for employees to receive investing advice. “AmeriSavers” could automatically deposit their tax refunds into retirement savings accounts.

The word “underwhelming” comes to mind. AmeriSave’s creators claim it will “help middle-class families build retirement security,” according to Ms. Pelosi’s statement Tuesday. Another backer, Rep. Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, told reporters yesterday that AmeriSave would make it easier for Americans with tightly stretched household budgets to put money away for retirement.

It sounds intriguing, but the devil is in the details. No one knows how many AmeriSavers there would be. The press releases claim the program would benefit as many as 100 million, but when pressed, Mr. Cardin admitted that the number of eligible people would depend on how much the government can afford to spend on the core matching-funds program, and could be much smaller. The income ceiling for eligibility for even partial matching funds could be set as low as $70,000 a year.

No one knows how much AmeriSave would cost. Ms. Pelosi suggested a $75 billion price tag over 10 years, but that’s only a guess; it could prove much more expensive. And it would be paid for by tax increases, in the guise of repealing corporate tax credits that allegedly encourage foreign outsourcing and a rollback of some of the Bush tax cuts on allegedly “wealthy” individuals.

AmeriSave is a bust. It would raise taxes and still leave many middle-class families as hard-pressed as before, especially those just getting by in high cost-of-living areas like New York. It would leave Social Security on the brink of insolvency. Their newfound zeal for private savings and compound interest is encouraging, but if Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Cardin, and their colleagues are serious about boosting personal retirement savings, they should stand behind President Bush’s plan to convert part of today’s payroll tax into savings by creating Social Security personal accounts.