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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