Neal Freeman writes for National Review Online about the uncertain future of Social Security.
The Social Security system today is, in essence, a pay-as-you-go welfare program in which beneficiaries are paid each Monday morning from tax revenues withheld from workers’ paychecks the previous Friday afternoon. Even the trustees of the Social Security system, notorious for understating the urgency of their plight, now say that the “trust fund” will be depleted by 2033. ……
Thirty years ago, … Social Security was identified ubiquitously as “the third rail of American politics,” which translated politically as “touch it and you die.” …
… The third rail of American politics has never really been touched — at least not by any serious figure aligned with a major political organization — and so we’ll never really know if the Social Security issue was in fact an instrument of instant political death. What we know is that we now have “a depleted trust fund,” which phrase, you’ll have to admit, falls less harshly upon the ear than does “a repudiated debt.”
We need a new metaphor. We have moved beyond “the third rail.” Given the history of democratic governance, we can predict with confidence that we will not soon see a deliberative process in which the facts are assembled carefully and then assessed soberly by men and women of sagacity and goodwill, after which we will unite behind a disciplined and durable solution to the nation’s retirement crisis. It seems much more likely that a raucous and tendentious scramble will now ensue, producing a last-minute, jerry-built compromise between two of the most powerful of America’s many warring tribes — the political tribe and the financial tribe. It seems more likely, that is to say, that our societal elders will stage a shotgun wedding, hustling an annoyed and anxious bride into holy matrimony (!) with a deeply disappointed bridegroom.
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Author: Mitch Kokai
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