An Opportunity Missed

December 15, 1999

On Dec. 8, the Florida Times-Union editorialized on the lost opportunities of the past year on Social Security reform:

Paying down the national debt will not save Social Security. To avoid reform that might give Americans more control over their own lives and reduce the power of the government to control them, liberal Democrats insisted that it made fiscal sense to reduce the debt.

Otherwise sensible Republicans bought into this idea, describing it as a 'lockbox,' and helped close out badly needed reform this year. By paying debt, the government would better be able to borrow money later, when the Social Security system goes into default, the thinking went. Note that some of the proponents of this theory were among the Democrats who controlled Congress for most of four decades and made no attempt to reduce the national debt or address the looming Social Security problem.

Admittedly, paying down the national debt did keep liberals from throwing it away on social programs. But no one should believe the problem has been solved, or even addressed.

The long-term unfunded liability of Social Security is $19 trillion. How is paying down -- or even paying off -- a debt of $5.5 trillion going to solve a $19 trillion problem?

If a new report is accurate, the problem may be even worse. People perversely are continuing to worsen the problem by living longer than government actuaries expected. When a blue-ribbon panel says that a $19 trillion problem has worsened, it should capture the attention of everyone -- even election-blinded politicians on Capitol Hill.

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