By Phillip M. Bailey
Wedged under a tentative Congress, an ideologically driven White House, argumentative pundits and a puzzled public is Social Security -— the new political football. Lost, however, is a serious effort to enhance awareness of the program, its challenges, and how to fix it without gutting the most significant achievement of the New Deal.
(Wanted: A public university that will sponsor such a dialogue.)
Passed by the 74th Congress, the Social Security Act of 1935 was established, in FDR’s words, to “give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.” After the economic meltdown of 1929, even the most free-market theologian couldn’t ignore that economic security was an inalienable American right which, according to historian Eric Foner, meant “expanding the meaning of freedom by extending assistance to broad groups of needy Americans — particularly the unemployed, elderly, and dependent — as a universal right of citizenship.”
Economic security as an inalienable right of citizenship may be socialist sedition in some circles, but the programs created in the hub of the New Deal — such as retirement insurance, food stamp supplements, veteran’s benefits, hospital insurance for the elderly and disabled, and the Administration for Children & Families — aid millions of American workers and their families daily.
Still, for 70 years Social Security has faced critics who seek not just its dismantlement, but a change in America’s concept of its social contract. A White House memo read, “For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win and in doing so … transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country.” The White House sounds more like a Soviet Politburo interested in propaganda than an executive branch interested in economic security.
So why should Americans mind?
For one, Bush is right — at least on the first part. Social Security does face a long-term financing challenge due to age demographics; it needs tinkering.
Baby-boomers will begin retiring in 2011. Estimates by the Social Security Trust conclude that, around 2018, payouts will exceed collections. According to the Century Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy research group, although a $3 trillion surplus exists, benefits will have to be cut to to 73 percent, and decline to about two-thirds before stabilizing.
The result? Workers, mainly young ones, will receive fewer benefits than their predecessors.
The solution? There’s a litany, from decreasing benefits to raising the age of eligibility. Privatization is only the least palatable.
Meanwhile authorities, from the system’s trustees to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, think the President’s “crisis” speeches are hyperbolic. Instead of privatization, many experts advance an improvement on the changes made by Ronald Reagan, who raised the payroll tax in 1983.
One of those recommendations includes changing the payroll tax — a flat tax paid disproportionately by low and middle-income workers — into a progressive income tax. Americans hate taxes, but that shouldn’t compromise safekeeping economic security as our birthright. What remains to be seen is what Bush’s privatization will accomplish, outside of his political agenda. Its ideological motivations are clear.
Phillip M. Bailey is a junior double-majoring in Political Science and Sociology, Chair of the U of L SNCC and is a columnist for The Cardinal. E-mail him at: pbailey@louisvillecardinal.com
