| | | Let's get something straight. Reagan didn't "save" Social Security. Nor, for that matter did the Greenspan Commission. The image of Greenspan et al laboring away to figure out how to keep it from running out of money is completely made up. Here are a couple of articles that are closer to the truth:
motherjones.com
link.springer.com
Although there are slight differences between them, they agree on major points. Especially the point that the Commission itself was deadlocked and couldn't get anything done on its own. The obvious reason why is that plenty of Republicans wanted to kill SS and wouldn't have minded if it ran out of money. On the other hand, some people in the WH knew that it was so popular that they couldn't allow it to simply die. Reagan staffer Ken Duberstein (a relatively non-ideological Republican) was critical in this along with Democrats Pat Moynihan and Robert Ball, who wrote an account of the events, a review of which is the second link above, and who worked for Tip O'Neill.
As for "saving" SS--no, they didn't save it, they extended its life. There is a big difference. If they had really saved SS, they would have explicitly recognized that their actuarial assumptions might have to be changed in the future and they would have left open the possibility of changing those assumptions and lifting the cap without having to go through Congress again (I mean lifting it in addition to the built in COLA, which has in fact been modified a couple of times since '83). There needs to be another life extender at this point, one which is more flexible and actually recognizes realities such as the fact that some people, especially wealthier ones, live longer than expected and others--notably blue collar workers--don't live as long.
It would be relatively easy to "save" SS if there was actually a commitment to it by Republicans as well as Democrats. But we all know that the R's commitment is to destroy SS, not save it. The only thing that "saved" it in '83 was the fact that it was so popular. But the Rs have campaigned against it for so long and have repeated the stupidities that many wingers on S.I. who shall not be named repeat ad nauseum that it cannot be saved, it will be broke, it is a "Ponzi scheme" blahblahblah that support for it has cooled somewhat. Well, sure, every program that is inadequately funded will eventually go broke. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. But it is still far more popular than not, we need a leader who can mobilize that popularity and get something real done. |
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