‘Pro-growth’ and ‘progressive’ aren’t mutually exclusive terms for Gene Sperling, the Bloomberg columnist and former national economic adviser to President Clinton who will be speaking here November 17.

Sperling knows that bad economics makes for bad policy and politics. With a growing $800 billion current account deficit, a costly war and a devastating hurricane, political gimmicks such as tax cuts may yield a growth spurt in the short-term but wreck fiscal health in the long term.

Replacing part or all of Social Security with risky private accounts isn’t any smarter and evades the hard political work of promoting saving among Americans, according to Sperling, who supports a ”universal 401(k)” in addition to Social Security:

The president can promote the individual ownership he wants and protect the guaranteed Social Security benefits Democrats insist on with a new universal 401(k) that offers all Americans a private retirement account in addition to Social Security and uses government funds to match contributions made by moderate and lower-income workers.

A universal 401(k) would increase savings far more than partly privatizing Social Security. Privatization that simply allocates part of the current 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax for employees to invest in private accounts does nothing to increase national savings: it’s like taking $1,000 a year from your parent’s 401(k) and putting it in your own individual retirement account.

Sperling’s new book is called The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity. He’ll be here pitching more of his solutions next week during his on-stage conversation with The Wall Street Journal‘s Tom Herman.