Shall have to wait two more years for reform?

[Andre Dermant <adseale@aol.com>]

The following newspaper article is a wake-up call to try to influence
our representatives to do something NOW, and not wait and wait:

ONLY SECURITY IS IN KNOWING POLITICIANS WILL COVER HIDES
St. Paul/Minneapolis Pioneer Planet, Apr. 30, '99
by Larry Eichel

In a speech before a Montgomery County Republican women's group, U.S.
Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., positively glowed as he extolled the virtues
of his party's evolving plan to reform Social Security. It's good
policy, he said, and good politics.

"If you sit back and play defense on Social Security as a Republican,
you will lose," he said at the event last weekend. "This is a debate we
have to be excited about. This is an idea whose time has come."

Well, maybe not. Almost certainly not.

Even as Santorum was speaking, reports were filtering out of Washington
that GOP congressional leaders were vehemently unexcited about tackling
Social Security in the here and now. Then Senate Majority Leader Trent
Lott made it official, saying that Congress will not act on the issue
this year, or presumably next.

The reason: It's not good politics - not with an election coming. The
Republican leaders made their decision, which some of them say may not
be final, after (what else?) looking at some new polls.

Their numbers show what other surveys have shown: A large percentage of
the public doesn't trust the Republicans on the issue. And there is no
broad national support for the party's concept of letting individuals
take control of some of their Social Security taxes and invest in mutual
funds.

Santorum says he has no plans to curtail his efforts to develop a
bipartisan Senate plan that would include individual accounts. But he
understands what's happening.

"The only reasons to do nothing are political fear on the part of the
Republicans and the risk that Democrats will take political advantage,"
he said.

In Washington, those invariably seem like very good reasons.

Perhaps it was inevitable that 1999 and 2000 would be years of doing
nothing on Social Security. Last month, the administration reported that
the booming economy had delayed the system's breaking point by two
years, to 2034. So why not waste those two years now, by putting off
tough decisions?

Combine that with President Clinton's waning popularity, the war in
Kosovo, and the growing sense among Republicans that they won't have a
Democratic president to deal with come 2001, and the instinct to stay
put is overwhelming.

The president hasn't helped either. After declaring in the State of the
Union that saving Social Security was his top priority, Clinton and his
aides have had little to say about the issue. At least that was true
until the past few days. Now that the Republicans look partisan and
short-sighted, everyone in the White House is eager to stress the
importance of taking action.

A two-year delay in reforming Social Security, if that's all it turns
out to be, is not the end of the world. But how are we to know that the
delay will be only two years?

These sorts of issues are more easily confronted in times of prosperity,
and the good times can't last forever. And whenever anyone's spine needs
weakening, there will always be an election around the corner.

What's disturbing, too, is that some elements of a consensus seem to be
emerging, or at least they did before the finger-pointing started.

Both the administration and the Republicans favor using much of the
budget surplus to bolster Social Security by paying down the debt. Both
agree that the system, however it is changed, must provide a guaranteed
benefit. Both favor putting some share of future payroll taxes into the
market.

That's where the consensus breaks down.

Clinton wants these investments to be modest and controlled by a
government agency. The idea has been criticized by a lot of reasonable
people, including Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, on the
grounds that it would be impossible to keep politics out of investment
decisions. Santorum and other Republicans want the investments to be
larger - and owned by individuals.

Despite fears among some Democrats that the GOP plan amounts to
"privatization," the gap between the two versions would not be
unbridgeable if both sides were willing to take risks.

But they aren't. So nothing will be done for now.