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What's Their Plan?
From the Editors
In a recent article featured in the New York Post and highlighted by the Cato Institute, Michael Tanner challenges Democrats to stop merely attacking Republicans for demanding Social Security reform and put forth a plan of their own. The facts are simple, there is not enough money to sustain Social Security in its current form. Either taxes must be raised, benefits must be cut, or people need the option to invest privately. Before Democrats berate another conservative for supporting the private investment option, maybe they should let their constituents know which alternative option they plan on championing.
Read the full article quoted below at the Cato Institute.
"Faced with a dismal political climate, Democrats appear ready to revive the hoary charge that Republicans seek to dismantle Social Security. But what's the Dems' answer?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has run TV ads attacking his opponent, Sharron Angle, for wanting "to wipe the program out." In Kentucky, Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul is being criticized for remarks he made in favor of Social Security privatization — in 1998. Several strategists are calling for Democratic candidates to tie their opponents to privatization efforts, including President George W. Bush's failed efforts to reform the troubled program.
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In fact, there are really only three options for Social Security reform: raise taxes, cut benefits or invest privately. A candidate who attacks his opponent for supporting some kind of private-investment option must therefore favor either tax hikes and/or benefit cuts. If that candidate goes on to rule out such benefit cuts as raising the retirement age, he or she is necessarily calling for a tax hike. And mighty big tax increases they'd need to be: a 50 percent rise in the payroll tax or the equivalent.
Traditionally, Republicans have responded to Democrats' Social Security demagoguery by curling into a fetal position. Perhaps this time they should try something different: demand that their opponents come up with their own plan for Social Security reform."
