When It Comes to Social Security, Gridlock is a Beautiful Thing
Posted on March 15, 2005
David Brooks takes a shot at analyzing the status of the current Social Security debate and gets it really wrong. Brooks starts out by saying that there is only a one in four chance that Social Security reform will happen this year. Fair enough; the polls show that only around 37% of Americans are buying into the idea of privatizing social security. He then tries to explain where both the Republicans and Democrats went wrong. He says that the Republicans underestimated Americans' love for the social security program and their willingness to take a cut in benefits. So far, so accurate. But where he goes terribly wrong is in saying that the Democrats and moderate Republicans who have opposed privatization at all costs are making a mistake by not meeting the privatization folks halfway. For the first time in a long time, Democrats are totally united against this absurd proposal to privatize Social Security, which even President Bush admits will not make the program fiscally sound. When a proposal is morally, ethically and logically wrong, you do not compromise. You say "No."
Put simply, there is no Social Security crisis. A few adjustments need to be made because our population is aging. Today, even Alan Greenspan said that it's not a complicated fix. He suggested--hold on to your hats folks--that we put the Social Security monies in a Lock Box, and stop co-mingling it with other funds. (Al Gore probably fell out of his chair when he heard Greenspan put forth this sensible idea from his 2000 presidential campaign.) Second, if we didn't have such a horrendous deficit from a war that was supposed to be paid for by Iraqi oil revenues (remember that promise?), the cost of the risky social experiment of private accounts wouldn't require us to borrow trillions of dollars from the Chinese. Third, Greenspan said today that raising the retirement age by even one year would have a tremendous positive impact.
Brooks says,
If Social Security reform fails--and obviously I hope this obit becomes obsolete--it will be many years before any sort of big entitlement reform will come up again. The parties will keep playing chicken, and we will soon find ourselves catastrophically buried under our own debt.He makes it sound like Social Security is the reason for the current deficit, which is absurd. This so-called "reform movement" is anything but that. This is a movement to dismantle the New Deal and wean Americans off a retirement plan that is funded by taxpayers. That is a fundamental policy shift embracing the idea that each person is responsible for his own retirement and that the government does not need to provide a safety net for the elderly and infirm. Although I personally find that position to be unethical, morally bankrupt and quite impractical (even the most libertarian among us probably doesn't want to trip over homeless elderly people eating cat food while on the way to Nordstrom's), it is a recognized--if unpopular--political position to take. So, let the privatizers stand up and tell the American people what they're really trying to do to Social Security: destroy it, starting with small, incremental steps. And when they tell the truth, the American people will see that, sometimes, gridlock can be a beautiful thing.