DAILY SUMMARY April 28 - May 3

[National Dialogue Moderator <moderator>]

	Daily Summaries for April 28th-May 3,1999
			Why Reform Now?


The daily summary for April 26-27 encapsulated the participants'
thinking on the question of social security reform and its timing.
Most of the contributors think that now is the time to reform and
once they reached this consensus the discussion moved on to more
general topics.  

After reading the roundtable discussion among the members of the
House Ways and Means Committee, the contributors in this part of
the dialogue directed many questions to these members, many of
which we are forwarding to their respective offices.[*] Based on
this dialogue, our guest moderator, Carolyn Lukensmeyer, then asked
the Congressional panel members why they couldn't work amongst
themselves to resolve the differences between  the President's
reform proposal and the Archer /Shaw plan.

On April 29th, a dissenter did make a case against the need for
reform. Using a Century Fund Report, he argues that the economic
forecasts of the social security trustees are too gloomy in relying
on a GDP growth rate that is half the historical average for the
past 75 years. He points out that a productivity increase of .15
percentage points would cover the combined cost increases in both
Social Security and Medicare over the next 75 years. He views the
call for reform as a phony crusade ginned up be Wall Street brokerage
houses eager to earn the commissions generated by the various
privatization proposals.

The participants' discussion on other more general matters will be
combined with the discussion in the values forum and summarized
with the postings from that dialogue.

* The bulk of the questions concerned the Archer/Shaw proposal and
  these are being forwarded to the Chairman's Office.

Barbara Brandon