Posted on: Thursday, May 5, 2005

EDITORIAL
More reality needed in Social Security debate

After a largely fruitless campaign to get folks to accept his idea of "privatizing" a portion of Social Security, President Bush has finally moved the national debate on this matter from fantasy to reality.

At his most recent news conference, Bush offered up a plan — perhaps flawed but at least a plan — that directly addresses solvency for Social Security.

Democrats must move beyond their appropriate, but largely irrelevant, campaign against privatization and come up with a solvency plan of their own.

In fact, reading between the lines of the Bush proposal, it's possible to conclude that privatization has not gone away, it has just been repackaged.

Philosophically, Bush's plan makes sense. It would protect the growth in benefits over the coming decades for the poorest Americans while slowing the growth in benefits for the wealthy.

The problem, of course, comes in defining what one means by "slow" growth in benefits and how "wealthy" is defined.

Indeed, the plan, as it sits today, would reduce future benefits for some 70 percent of all Americans. That's a cut in what is promised today.

But the task now for Democrats is to go beyond finding flaws in the president's plan to offering their own alternatives. Perhaps Bush's indexing plan can be tweaked so the working middle class is made whole.

Other alternatives worth exploring include raising the cap on the amount of wages taxed for Social Security and incrementally increasing the age at which recipients are entitled to full benefits.

If the solution involves increasing payments for some Americans while reducing their benefits, they will naturally press hard for private accounts to shelter some of what they stand to lose.

That, in turn, will once again begin to widen the gap between what is promised and what is available in the system.

What's needed is a fix that will work for the duration, not changes that simply put off the problem for another day.