Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has blasted Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for having the audacity to concur with President Bush on - let's see - tax cuts, tax simplification and Social Security-related personal savings accounts. The distinguished Sen. Reid, having described Chairman Greenspan as "arrogant" for a decade, now terms him one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington. Connecticut Congressman Rob Simmons, generally a Democrat-voting Republican, holds this view about the pressing need to repair Social Security: Why stir up a political hornet's nest . . . when there is no urgency? When does the program go belly-up - 2042? I will be dead by then.
If the preponderance of data suggests the critical importance of fixing Social Security sooner rather than later (and it does), then the discussion should lead first to agreement on the program's impending insolvency and second to the form the fix will take.
Democratic governors do not help when they say it is not Social Security that merits attention first, but Medicare or Medicaid. The mainline media ("many reporters," says economics columnist Robert Samuelson, exhibit "math phobia" and so "detest math") do not help when they practice what he calls "journalistic malpractice" by refusing to report the numbers accurately and understandably.
And the AARP - almost exclusively a toiler in the Democratic vineyard - does not help by ginning up hostility among those over 54 to administration Social Security repair proposals (particularly personal savings accounts for younger workers and lower-income groups), when the president has stipulated repeatedly that under no administration proposal would there be any benefit reductions for anyone now over 54.
In the next two months, President Bush and members of his administration will be on the hustings, offering ideas for a permanent fix to Social Security - and perhaps Medicare.
During that time the Democrats could help by de-emphasizing what they are against and joining the discussion on what they are for - e.g., benefit cuts, tax hikes, higher income caps, increased retirement ages, putting new revenues in a "lock box." Or any in a panoply of options (even among mandated private-sector accounts) to supplement Social Security and other federal safety-net programs - options that practically all models and studies show would be vastly better financial deals than Social Security itself, especially Social Security alone.
The Democrats might thereby mature from the insistence of too many that nothing be done about pressing questions (such as Iraq). They might grow beyond limiting their support for "choice" to issues such as abortion. Indeed, by returning to a positive mode about fixing Social Security rather than unadulterated negativism - by rejoining the debate - they might begin contributing to a permanent solution at last.