Bush plans sabotage of Social Security

By JACK Z. SMITH
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
It's become more obvious than ever.
President Bush has no desire to preserve the spectacularly successful Social Security program as we now know it, even though that could be accomplished with minimal pain.
Instead, he favors an approach that would significantly cut future benefits for the middle and upper classes compared to what they would receive under the current system. Benefits for lower-income people wouldn't be reduced, however.
That doesn't sound very Republican, does it? After all, the Bush administration consistently has championed a series of tax cuts most benefiting the wealthy, while showing comparatively little support for measures that would benefit lower-income people (such as raising the minimum wage).
Bush's goal, in my opinion, isn't to preserve Social Security as we know it. He and other Republicans would prefer to gradually erode support for the program because they detest it on ideological grounds. The very idea of a national insurance program, a social safety net for America, a we're-all-in-this-together approach, doesn't appeal to their Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest, more-for-the-richest philosophy.
Poorest retirees
As he finally made clear in April, Bush favors a system that would preserve future benefits for the poorest 30 percent of retirees while reducing them for the other 70 percent.
It should be obvious to any thinking adult what the political impact of such a move would be: It would give Social Security the stigma of a welfare program designed primarily to benefit the downtrodden.
It gradually would erode support for Social Security among the middle-class and upper-class people who largely determine political party platforms, what legislation is passed in Washington and the outcome of elections.
Under the Bush plan, the poorest 30 percent of retirees would receive the Social Security benefits they're promised under current law. The other 70 percent would get less, with the negative impact increasing as time goes on.
As an example, a person who retired in 2055 with an average career income equivalent to $58,000 in today's dollars would experience a 31 percent reduction in Social Security benefits compared to what the benefit would be if the current system were preserved, according to a report by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The reduction in benefits would be even greater for those who chose to have some of their payroll taxes diverted into the personal retirement accounts that Bush favors.
In terms of sheer impact, a reduction in future Social Security benefits would hit the middle class much harder than the wealthy. That's because a much higher percentage of a middle-class person's retirement income comes from Social Security.
Under Bush's plan, Social Security benefits in future decades would become an increasingly smaller percentage of the income that a middle-class person had earned when working -- thus diminishing the program's importance and popularity.
In his remarkably unsuccessful and agonizingly lengthy 60-day blitz to push his unpopular privatization plan, Bush has been talking out of both sides of his mouth. First he praises Social Security as a wonderful program, and then he recommends "reform" proposals designed to erode its public support and make it a less consequential component of America's social safety net.
Trust fund raid
If Bush and the GOP-dominated Congress truly wanted to strengthen Social Security, they would stop raiding the program's trust fund in a desperate effort to reduce the size of the record federal budget deficits that they are ringing up.
As Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in March, "We need, in effect, to make the phantom 'lock-boxes' around the trust fund real."
If the federal government is to preserve its fiscal integrity and credibility, it eventually must pay back the trust fund by raising taxes, cutting spending, borrowing more money or engaging in a combination of those measures.
Social Security can be preserved in its current basic form by implementing some moderate common-sense measures to ensure its long-term solvency and preserve its benefit structure.
These measures could range from substantially raising the top income level at which Social Security payroll taxes are deducted (income above $90,000 currently isn't taxed) to boosting, very gradually and modestly, the age for receiving full retirement benefits, in recognition of the fact that people are living longer.
The issue is whether we want to strengthen and preserve Social Security or sabotage it. Bush obviously favors the latter.
Knight Ridder/Tribune