Across the aisle, Social Security has kept a similarly low profile. Democratic candidates deliver policy speeches on everything from agriculture to John Ashcroft but most stay mum about Social Security on the stump. Of course, frontrunner John Kerry pays lip service to protecting senior’s benefits. But one could travel for days on his campaign bus before learning that the system needed any fixing at all.
This is surprising since experts in both parties are convinced that Social Security needs a dramatic overhaul, soon. Current estimates have taxpayers paying more into the system than they will receive in retirement pay by the year 2018 and the entire system rendered insolvent in the next thirty years. Even the most optimistic of politicians will admit under pressure that the large number of retiring baby boomers expecting a return on their payroll taxes could very well wreak fiscal havoc on the land. The days are dwindling before the Social Security crunch becomes a crisis but in this election year, the presidential candidates of both major parties seem reluctant to mention the problem at all.
While the candidates’ reticence may not seem prudent considering the gravity of the issue, it could make a good deal of political sense. In the past decade, the politics of Social Security have undergone a tremendous transformation, leaving both parties uncertain exactly how to make it a winning issue at the polls. Republicans, who generally favor at least partial privatization of the system, are uneasy about pushing any program that seems to dramatically alter the 20th century’s most popular government program. Democrats, riddled with internal dissent on the proper course for fixing the system, have trouble distinguishing themselves as anything but defenders of the status quo. So while the Republicans and Democrats will no doubt get more specific on the entitlement program before 2004 is through, leaders in both parties are thinking very carefully about how much they say, when.
Once upon a time, the campaign rules on Social Security were much simpler: Democrats talked about it, Republicans did not. More specifically, FDR’s party took credit for the prizes of the New Deal program while big government-bashing Republicans tried to stay clear of American politics’ third rail. “For years the Republican response on Social Security was that they hoped the Democrats wouldn’t bring it up,” Michael Tanner, a scholar at the conservative Cato Institute, told NEWSWEEK. “The Democrats always brought it up and then the Republican would curl up in a fetal position and talk about how much he loved his grandmother. And then they’d lose ten points in the polls and say, ‘See? Social Security’s a bad issue for us.”
But by the late 1990s, as voters became more aware of the rough fiscal seas ahead, the consensus that Social Security was a “Democratic issue” had begun to crack. Calling himself “a reformer with results,” George W. Bush aggressively highlighted his plan to create personal investment accounts for Social Security savings that, he said, would promote individual responsibility and prevent the system’s financial ruin. Al Gore and the Democrats thought that they could turn Bush’s alacrity for drastic change into their own political gain. “There was some confidence that they could scare the Republicans off with the privatization charge,” said Will Marshall, a Clinton administration official who heads the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank for centrist Democrats. “But it didn’t really work against George W. Bush.”
As Bush took office, many Republicans thought they had a mandate for privatization from the public. But after 9-11 and a series of high-profile corporate scandals, public approval for market-based solutions to the Social Security crisis seemed to wane. Republicans warned candidates running in the 2002 midterm elections to distance themselves from privatization plans. Democrats were convinced they could again sweep to victory as defenders of the status quo.
Once again, however, things didn’t turn out as planned. Analysts in both parties said that in several highly watched races around the country, Democrats lost control of the debate on Social Security when their opponents pressed them to present a coherent plan. “The emblematic moment came in the 2002 election in North Carolina,” Marshall said. “Erskine Bowles was assailing Liddy Dole for being for privatization and she held up a blank piece of paper and said, ‘This is my opponent’s plan for Social Security.’”
Dole went on to soundly defeat Bowles. Her campaign approach to Social Security could be a preview of Republican tactics to come. With a ballooning budget deficit and gripes from the right about his administration’s penchant for high discretionary spending, President Bush needs to prove his bona fides with his party’s fiscal conservative base. Some say a hard fight on privatization would do the trick.
It’s unclear, though, when exactly the fight will begin. In the weeks leading up to the State of the Union, conservative activists say they got strong signals from the White House that the president was going to use the speech for a major privatization push. That didn’t turn out to be the case. Now the president’s political advisers have promised a big policy plan in time for the fall campaign. Fiscal conservatives say they won’t wait forever. “We’re not going to get excited about gay marriage and steroids,” Tanner said. “There’s got to be something there for the economic conservative side of the base.”
Still, others in the GOP are urging caution. Remembering 2000’s hard fight for Florida, they are wary of any big proposal that Democrats could frame as cheating seniors of their due. What’s more, some say the Republicans risk of selling privatization as a painless fix. “When we get in a crunch, someone is going to have to tell voters that we have to raise money to finance the transition [to private accounts],” said Robert Blendon, a professor at Harvard’s school of public health who tracks public opinion on social issues. “No poll has shown that people have any awareness of what that’s going to cost.” Blendon told NEWSWEEK that when the public learns of the high cost of Republican plans to fix Social Security, public support for GOP proposal could wither away.
In the meantime, Democrats may be gearing up for an old school Social Security strategy, attacking any Republican plan as bad for seniors in swing states. Politically wise or not, such tactics would effectively postpone a great debate on Social Security for other candidates in others year. Marshall has concluded that such a postponement is inevitable. “I’ve been saying for years that the Democrats need to get out in front on this issue,” he said. “But when I look over my shoulder there’s nobody there.”
