Social Security Reform's Proponents Recruit Young Blood
Joe Gandelman
Depending on where you stand politically, you can say this IS the "the child left behind"...or it's "No Child Left Behind." You can say it's a p.r. masterstroke, or a dumb. gimmicky, cringe-inducing idea that may actually backfire with some people on the fence:
The battle over Social Security has been joined by an unusual lobbyist, a 9-year-old from Texas who has agreed to travel supporting President Bush's proposal.
The boy, Noah McCullough, made a splash with his encyclopedic command of presidential history, earning five appearances on the "Tonight" show and some unusual experiences in the presidential campaign last year. He beat Howard Dean in a trivia contest at the Democratic National Convention and wrote for his local newspaper about his trip to see the inauguration.
"He's very patriotic and very Republican," said Noah's mother, Donna McCullough, a former teacher and self-described Democrat. "It's the way he was born."
In a sign of how far groups go to carry their message on Social Security, Progress for America has signed up Noah, a fourth grader, as a volunteer spokesman. He starts on spring break from James Williams Elementary School in Katy, Tex.
The Times explains that Prorgress for America is planning to spend $20 million on Bush's Social Security plan. It already spent $1 million on TV ads and is now sending experts around the country. One of the will be Noah, who can't get Social Security for 60 years:
Noah will travel to a handful of states ahead of visits by the president and will go on radio programs, answer trivia questions and say a few words about Social Security. Though he is obviously not an expert (and not really a lobbyist, either), officials say the effort is a lighthearted way to underline Mr. Bush's message.
"What I want to tell people about Social Security is to not be afraid of the new plan," Noah said. "It may be a change, but it's a good change."
Will seniors and younger voters say, "Now I KNOW this is a good idea because a brilliant 9 year old opened my eyes!" Don't be cynical, though. Surely this was an offhanded p.r. idea tossed in to help the plan get some extra media ink and time — not something that'll be done to death, and most certainly not an attempt to make a 9 year old the image of Social Security reform. Right? Well......:
The trip was a brainchild of Stuart Roy, a former aide to Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, who recently joined the DCI Group, a political consultancy here with ties to the Republican Party and Mr. Bush.
The firm is heavily involved in Progress for America's efforts. The president of the organization, Brian McCabe, is a partner at DCI, and the organization contracts with the firm. In the 2004 campaign, the Progress for America Voter Fund paid DCI about $800,000, records show. Mr. Roy knew Noah because the boy lives in suburban Houston, part of Mr. DeLay's district, and the House majority leader has met him. "We'll have Noah there as the face of Social Security reform," Mr. Roy said. "It's about the next generation."
In other words, will we see the AARP and other groups opposing the White House plan or insisting on extensive compromise be showing pictures of seniors, etc while Progress for America focuses on elementary school age faces and perhaps teens? It's an interesting idea. If done right it might not hurt; if overdone it could be disastrous. And Noah is on message:
Noah plans to run for the White House in 2032 - and he wants Social Security addressed before then."It will be bankrupt when I'm president," he said.
If you don’t like this plan, blame Allan Greenspan and Ronald Reagan. They designed it back in the mid 1980s...
What has changed is that after about 2018 there will no longer be a surplus to go into the general fund, due to demographics, and pols can no longer use the surplus to fund their pet pork. Both sides of the aisle are guilty of misrepresenting SS while taking advantage of the surplus for their pet projects. That said, the Dems are probably more to blame because (1)they thought it up, and (2)LBJ ensured it's early insolvency with his Great Society programs. Then too, the Dems have controlled the Congress for most of the time that SS has been around.
The original planners always expected that people would live longer in the future. If anything they overestimated the increase in longevity.
No one could have anticipated the huge size of the Baby Boom cohort, though.
Social Security will be back in balance once this cohort has passed its way through the system.
So it is not a ponzi scheme at all, just a demographical imbalance, which would have caused us fiscal issues no matter which scheme we use for retirement.
Despite Jim Ausman's claim to the contrary, the current system IS a Ponzi scheme, and a particularly selfish one, for it has from the beginning been structured under the assumption that every generation would be bigger than the last. FDR recognized that this was a problem, which was why when he passed it he also proposed that over a period of decades it slowly be devolved to be managed by the states, and toward voluntary and involuntary self-supporting equities (news flash: self-supporting equities are insurance policies, stocks, bonds--i.e. individual accounts!).
It's particularly disingenuous of anyone to claim that the system will only fail to be there if the current administration finally does the moral and upright thing and begins the transition process that should have begun decades ago. It's particularly irksome to see people opposing this merely because the current administration has proposed it--and no question about it, just reading many of the objections, it's fairly clear that much of the resistance is just the typical kneejerk "if Bush is for it I'm agin' it" reasoning we've seen so much of in the last few years.
We need to stop burdening our children like this. At one point it could be argued that it was a necessary evil. But it isn't any longer, and it's time to do the unselfish thing, bite the bullet, and start the transition process toward individual ownership that was always intended.
Take the percentage an employee gets deducted from a paycheck and allow the employee to invest that entire amount in a personal IRA, whether it be one already set up by the employer, or a personal one with a private investment firm. As long as the employee can prove the investment on the 1040 every year, deductions from SS can be stopped from the paycheck.
Would that work?