Citizen Journal

In Point #7 of your argument, you claim that "we could radically cut the cost of Social Security," and you propose the model of Australia, where benefits to the affluent were cut to zero. But if the Democrats think they're doing well riding the resistance to Social Security benefit cuts now, the resistance to your more "radical" program would be that much greater.

Moreover, the Democrats would be in a poor position to advocate "radical" benefit cuts if they had fought tooth-and-nail against the less-radical cuts proposed by Bush. Talk about flip-flopping!

You suggest that if we fix the Social Security program once, we won't be able to do it again:

And there is a big risk associated with saving Social Security now--the risk that we'll save too much. Nobody--neither the President, nor Pozen, nor the Democrats--is talking about radically reducing the size of the program, Australia style. They're all talking about saving a program that consumes somewhere from 12 to 17 percent of the national payroll. Once its financial imbalance is solved it will be virtually impossible to restructure. Voters will consider the problem taken care of. The system will be solvent-a tub resting firmly on its own bottom, funded by a dedicated payroll tax-so why talk about changing it?

But I'm not so sure. For one thing, if private accounts are introduced, this will give the program a still-evolving character, and provide pretexts for revisiting it. Besides, even if Social Security does get locked in by reform, better that it get locked in at the Pozen Plan level that at the higher level implied by the schemes championed by other Democrats, e.g. Diamond-Orszag.

You want to cut Social Security more in order to save money for universal health care:

The reason to postpone the solution is that if American politics goes better than expected we may want to cut Social Security back in future decades even more radically than anyone is now contemplating, in order to pay for more important (and more deeply equalizing) government programs. Would you take a deal that gave us universal Medicare-style health insurance if the price was cutting down Social Security into a mere program of earned insurance against poverty? It seems like a no-brainer to me. But it's only possible if Social security is perceived as in need of fixing--even better, if it's in crisis!

I don't support the idea of universal Medicare-style health insurance, but if for the sake of argument we take that as a goal, is there a strong reason to prefer taxing the middle class and the affluent through "radically" reducing their Social Security benefits, rather than through raising taxes on them? Also, if a universal Medicare-style health insurance plan is really popular (I've never seen the evidence for this; big health care plans were a loser for Clinton in 1994 and for Kerry in 2004; but Dems keep acting like it is, so maybe I'm missing something), couldn't you explain to voters that, in order to afford, you'll have to continue along the path of reform from 2005 and strengthen the means-testing of Social Security benefits? Wouldn't Democrats be in a better position to argue this if they had helped set the precedent for means-testing in 2005 than if they had fought it, standing (to all appearances) for a principle of "No change, never" instead?

In short, your position is too-clever-by-half. You're positioning yourself to Bush's right on this issue, which is interesting but a bit too heroic. You'd do better to side with Kinsley on this one.

Nathan