Fix it or lose it: social security will go if Dems don't help

By: William Mulgrew

Posted: 3/4/05

Last week, my colleagues and I in the Drexel Republicans drew fire for trying to get students to realize how very important politicians need to reform social security in a bipartisan fashion or else it would collapse. Sadly, the Democrats are not giving any indication that they'll help.

Drexel Democrats President Brad Levinson may make fun of us for chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, social security has got to go," when Senator Rick Santorum came to Drexel, but he overlooks a large embarrassment on his side of the fence.

Some have stated in The Triangle that Mr. Santorum's visit hurt academic discourse, but when the senator tried to involve the student audience by asking them what would happen in 2008 (Baby-boomers could begin early retirement), a person in the crowd shouted, "George Bush will leave office!" The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on the event, stating, "Actually, that's scheduled for 2009. But many in the crowd cheered anyway."

Now, out of fairness, the individual who shouted that isn't affiliated with the Drexel Democrats, but the Democrats in the audience who cheered sure didn't make our university look very well informed.

Speaking of being informed, unfortunately for Mr. Levinson, there was a lot of truth in our statement. If Democrats refuse to help Republicans address the social security issue in a bipartisan manner and just sit back and obstruct, social security will indeed go-downhill.

Two prominent Democrats support privatization-Former senators Bob Kerrey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Unfortunately, Senator Moynihan is deceased, so the Democrats can no longer hear his voice of reason. But Senator Kerrey, on the other hand, made his views public in the Wall Street Journal.

Kerrey writes, "[L]iberals are wrong to fear that President Bush's proposal represents a threat to Social Security... I hope they see that President Bush is giving them an opportunity to finally do something about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer."

Mr. Santorum showed students in his presentation what the cost of doing nothing will do. By as early as 2020, social security will ring in a projected $57 billion deficit. Michael Tanner from the Cato Institute seconds this by adding that this deficit will increase at that point anywhere from $150 to $600 billion for each year that we put off reforming the system. Even if the Democrats dismiss Santorum and Tanner as partisan hacks, how would they respond to the Social Security's trustees? They have testified on the record repeatedly that Social Security will start running a debt by 2018.

While Bob Kerrey doesn't delve into projections, he does concede how doing nothing will cost us dearly, "Liberals, who have silently watched the share of state and federal spending apportioned to the elderly grow at the expense of education, training, child care and research, will be appalled to discover how much their silence has cost them."

President Clinton summed up our options very clearly; we must raise taxes, cut benefits, or privatize.

If we keep the status quo, we'll have to do one of two things (or both): raise taxes or cut benefits. At the Democrat protest, one protestor held a sign that read, "TAX THE RICH," but can Democrats honestly believe that taxing the rich will compensate for deficit shortfalls of $150 to $600 billion each year?

Under our tax code, many small business owners have to list their company's assets as personal income. Forcing them to pay more taxes will force them to cut jobs. This is critical since their entrepreneurship and incentive is the fastest growing facet of the economy.

But it is a burden they cannot share alone. A Cato Institute figure reveals that 80% of American families pay more in the social security payroll tax than the federal income tax. That means that if we raise payroll taxes, it will significantly hurt them just as well.

Tanner, however, forces us to look at the big picture: "But the larger crisis is not about the system's finances. It is about workers forced to pay 12.4% of their wages into a system that cannot pay them the promised level of benefits. It is about a system where workers have no real ownership of their benefits, and where low- and middle-income workers cannot accumulate wealth that they can use in retirement and pass along to their heirs.

"We have an unfair system that is slowly going broke. Some commentators say this is acceptable and is not a crisis because they might be dead by the time the bill comes due. The mind boggles."

So what is the Democrats' plan? Not even John Kerry had a "plan" for social security, stating at the second presidential debate that he would neither privatize nor cut benefits (thereby leaving taxation as the only option.) Bob Kerrey writes that in the absence of a plan, the best the Democrats can hope for is to prevent reform from happening, "They should feel no pride of accomplishment if that is the result."

While Mr. Levinson can poke fun at my colleagues and I for our chant, the joke is on him and the Democrats if they do nothing. A Zogby poll revealed that 61% of Americans under the age of 30 support partial-privatization for younger workers, 58% under 50, and 45% over 65. That's a majority in two age brackets and almost half of the third. But if we pay the ultimate price by waiting and doing nothing, the Democrats will pay an even heavier price in the polls when millions of Americans wake up and realize that we had a chance to fix this but they stood in the way.

William Mulgrew is a sophmore majoring in english and history & politics. Mr. Mulgrew is the secretary of the Drexel University College Republicans and can be reached at wjm28@drexel.edu.