IS A BIPARTISAN COALITION REQUIRED to pass legislation that would allow individuals to invest their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks and bonds? Not really. Surely, the White House will endorse a Social Security reform plan that slows the growth of benefits by roughly 40 percent, right? Don't count on it. And won't Democrats be able to attack almost any reform proposal by President Bush with political impunity? Actually, obstructing Bush carries real risks. But as for all the talk about a new paradigm, doesn't Social Security still represent the third rail of politics--touch it and you get badly hurt? Well, we're going to see about that.
The point is that if you believed those nuggets of the conventional wisdom in Washington, you'd assume Bush's plan to reform Social Security is dead even before it's been unveiled. And you'd be wrong.
The prospects for enacting a reform bill this year are not exactly bright, but they aren't grim either. What are the exact odds of passage? Nobody knows. It depends on what the White House proposes or is willing to settle for. And that hasn't been decided, except to the extent that individual investment accounts must be the heart of the legislation. It also depends on how effectively the Bush team carries out its strategy in Congress.
Start with the strategy. The White House does intend to pursue bipartisanship, but of a distinctly Bush variety. That means rounding up all, or nearly all, the Republicans in the House and Senate, plus a few Democratic
defectors. This is the only realistic approach. Most congressional Democrats oppose investment accounts, much less any conceivable Bush financing scheme that would make accounts feasible. So do their chief allies, the AARP and organized labor. Democratic senator Teddy Kennedy insisted last week that Bush wants to destroy the Social Security system simply because it's a great Democratic achievement. He'd oppose any measure freeing payroll taxes for investment accounts, but some Democratic senators have a different view. Which is good, because Bush will probably need 60 votes in the Senate--thus a few Democrats--because of budget rules.
In the House, Bush doesn't need any Democrats, though it might be easier to attract a handful of Democrats in the Senate if some House Democrats break ranks first. So far, the only House Democrat to cosponsor a Republican reform bill is Allen Boyd of Florida, a moderate. One House Republican vigorously wooed a young Democratic reformer, but the Democrat backed away at the insistence of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. "Pelosi is pulling out all the stops to intimidate Democrats" and prevent them from defecting, the Republican said. "So far, she's succeeding."
Republican unity in Congress may not be sufficient to win passage, but it is necessary. For the White House, the key task is to draft a Social Security proposal that will please or at least be acceptable to three Republican factions. The first faction favors dumping the "wage index" used to calculate a beneficiary's initial monthly payment. This would slow the growth of benefits by 40 percent over the next few decades while keeping benefits at the current, inflation-adjusted level. The White House initially looked favorably on this. But it's moved away from the idea in the face of noisy objections that a 40 percent "cut" is a nonstarter.
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