The president sounds like a carnival barker these days as he hawks his scheme to fix Social Security. He’ll say anything to get you on his side, just as the barker will promise you anything to get you to pay your way inside the tent.
Like the carnival barker, Mr. Bush’s plan is all flash and no substance. The question is, will the American public buy it and prove P.T. Barnum right when he says in this country there’s a sucker born every minute?
First indications are that Barnum may be right. Before the president’s State of the Union speech last week, a bare majority (51 percent) thought he was moving the country in the right direction. Polls after the speech show that figure has incredibly jumped to 66 percent.
Maybe it’s not so incredible. The president is essentially promising a free lunch. Even Republicans such as Sen. Lindsey Graham agree that Mr. Bush’s solution is all dessert and no vegetables. Graham is doing something about it and working on a compromise. More about that later; first, it is important to understand why Mr. Bush is being downright deceitful.
You don’t need a lot of mumbo-jumbo economics or higher math to figure out the president’s scam. Mr. Bush wants to turn part of your Social Security into a personal savings account tied to the stock market. In order to achieve the rate of return he promised, you have to make the basic assumption that the economy will do very well over the next 75 years.
But in order to show that the current Social Security system isn’t working, the president makes the basic assumption that the same economy operating over the same period of time will not do well at all. The president is either dumb or dishonest. Given the pedigree of Mr. Bush’s economic advisers, I’m guessing dishonest.
The president has stopped talking about the Social Security "crisis" and substituted the word "problem," but he hasn’t stopped exaggerating. Best estimates are, without any changes, the Social Security trust fund is just fine until 2042 or 2052 (if you believe the Congressional Budget Office). Mr. Bush claims that in 2042, Social Security will be broke.
Actually, he and his economic advisers know that it won’t be "broke" at all. Even by 2042, the Social Security trust fund will be able to pay about 70 percent of its obligation. With a small tweak in the retirement age and the payroll tax, there won’t be a problem at all.
So why is the president so intent on privatizing Social Security if there is no crisis? (Note: Mr. Bush now prefers to use the word "personal" rather than "private" so he doesn’t scare most people who actually think Social Security is one government program that works.)
You have to understand that second terms are all about a president’s place in history. Republicans have a long and bitter hatred for Social Security, although only Barry Goldwater in the last 40 years had the guts to advocate doing away with it — and, for that mistake, he got to spend his exile in Arizona.
It would be quite a legacy for Mr. Bush to open the door to privatizing Social Security. What a contrast to Daddy, who didn’t have the vision thing. And what a way to wean voters away from voting Democrat.
Republicans know they can’t get the president’s plan passed without the help of Democrats. Graham has been dispatched to try and entice Democrats by doing two things: paying for the scam in a time of huge Bush budget deficits, and making it seem fair to low- and moderate-income workers (a surefire way to get Democrats to climb aboard).
Graham wants to pay for the estimated $2-trillion transition costs of the Bush proposal by "temporarily" increasing the amount of income that is subject to Social Security taxation. Are you as surprised as me that a conservative Republican believes there is such a thing as a "temporary" tax?
Graham also would cut benefits for all but low- and moderate-income workers. At the same time, he would guarantee benefits for those who earn less than $35,000 a year. This is kind of a reverse Mary Poppins philosophy — a spoonful of medicine to make the president’s sugar go down.
If you’re going to cut benefits and increase payroll taxes as Graham suggests, why not keep the current system, which guarantees your retirement payments instead of leaving it up to the whims of Wall Street?
Because Mr. Bush badly needs his legacy — and, without Social Security reform, all he would have on his r�sum� is the Iraq War.
And that ain’t no legacy at all.
