Crisis or Confusion - The Status of Social Security
By Paul M. Weyrich
March 7, 2005
Let's see. How does it go again? The president's Social Security plan is dead. Right? I mean popularity of individual accounts has declined in the polls and the Democrats have vowed to lie on the tracks rather than to see these private accounts enacted. So that's the end, right? I mean we know that many Republicans have backed away from the president's plan, right? So it has to be dead. If Democrats are united against it and Republicans are running from it and it isn't popular and congressmen returning from the recess say they saw no demand for changes in Social Security, it has to be dead. Right? Don't you believe a word of it.
I have watched with great interest over nearly four decades in Washington how a determined president almost always gets most or all of what he wants. Lyndon Johnson was rebuffed in the elections of 1966, the year I came to work in the U.S. Senate. By that time the Viet Nam War had grown unpopular. Inflation was rampant. Johnson himself had grown unpopular. Nevertheless, he was able to push a number of his initiatives through Congress.
Richard Nixon barely won the presidency in 1968 and he was faced with a vicious partisan Senate. Albeit with Vice President Agnew breaking tie votes, Nixon was able to get the controversial Alaska pipeline approved as well as the ABM system, which was later negotiated away by Henry Kissinger.
Gerald Ford was the first President in our history who had not been elected by the people. His pardon of President Nixon, which looked to the outside world like a quid pro quo deal, made him instantly unpopular. Yet Ford was determined to bring spending under control. He vetoed more spending bills in his short tenure than any president in modern history. Despite his obvious weaknesses all but one of his vetoes was upheld.
Jimmy Carter turned out to be a weak president. He was not popular. Giving away the Panama Canal was extremely unpopular. Still and all, Carter was able to get it done.
Ronald Reagan got his tax cuts through a very reluctant House of Representatives. George Herbert Walker Bush got his Americans with Disability Act through despite fierce opposition from his own party.
Bill Clinton did suffer a defeat with "Hillary Care." Democrats have examined how the Republicans seized the initiative by having outside groups do TV advertising. Democrats concede that when Hillary Care was defeated it caused the entire Clinton presidency to melt down.
So that is what is playing out now when it comes to Social Security. Democrats figure if they can do in the president's Social Security plan it will cripple his presidency and the Democrats will take back control of the Congress in the 2006 elections.
Close but no cigar, as Groucho Marx might have said. First, the president was in Europe when the Democrats, through the AARP and others, launched their campaign against private accounts. The Republicans were not prepared for the onslaught so the Democrats had the field for themselves for a couple of weeks.
Second, the reason the Republicans were able to defeat Clinton over healthcare is because Hillary insisted on an all-or-nothing approach. Dave Hoppe, then Chief of Staff to Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who co-coordinated the opposition to Hillary Care both inside and outside the Senate, can tell you that some Republicans bent over backwards to offer compromise proposals to the Clinton folks but Hillary would hear none of it. Hoppe and all the rest of us held our breath lest Hillary accept the compromise because had she done so she would have achieved two thirds or more of her objectives. She was rigid. Uncompromising.
This, in contrast to the president, who has remained flexible and open to any idea put forth by the Congress, regardless of party. Finally, the Republicans won because, as Fox News analyst Fred Barnes has pointed out, they were able to hang some slogans around the Clinton health care plan which stuck. The Republicans pointed to this massive complex government takeover of our health-care system, something the public was reluctant to accept. But then Republicans were able to suggest that Hillary Care might mean you could no longer choose your own doctor. With that the program became unpopular, which unpopularity stiffened the spines of some GOP Senators.
So while the president has suffered some minor setbacks for Social Security reform, he is by no means out of the ballgame. First, he has yet to present his actual plan. So Democrats are really shadow-boxing because we don't know exactly what his plan will contain. Second, the president is only in phase one of his education plan. He is trying to convince the American people that Social Security is in crisis and must be fixed. The same polls which show that the president's plan (even though he has yet to present one) has lost support also show that the public now is convinced that Social Security is in trouble.
That means phase one of the president's initiative is, in fact, a success because remember it was Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and others who have consistently said that there is no crisis in the Social Security system. The polls which have the Democrats bringing out the champagne bottles also show that 65% of voters under the age of 40 strongly support the idea of private accounts. It is with voters 55 and older where the opposition to the Bush initiative has taken place. If those voters can be convinced they will be held harmless by any plan which will help the younger workers, then most likely their opposition will largely diminish.
Am I suggesting here that a major overhaul of Social Security is a slam dunk? Not quite. In this town it is always very hard to change things and much easier to stop change. What I am suggesting is before the Democrats celebrate too much they ought to remember that George W. Bush has been so successful precisely because he has always been underestimated. I was at a meeting last week where Karl Rove described the president's feisty determination on this issue. What I am saying is this: a) Social Security reform is far from dead; and b) Don't count out George Bush. He might be on the ropes temporarily but watch for him to come out slugging.
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Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.