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The Best and Worst in Social Security 2005
By Greg Anrig Jr., The Century Foundation:
Social Security Network
December 28, 2005
The year 2005 turned out to be one of the best ever for Social Security. The debate launched by President Bush's proposal to partially privatize the system ultimately helped to demonstrate how strong public support remains for the nation's most successful program. Polls showed that as Americans learned more about the impact of diverting Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts, they increasingly understood that the idea would make the system's finances worse, not better.
A sequence of CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls that asked this question, "As you may know, a proposal has been made that would allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market or in bonds, while the rest of those taxes would remain in the Social Security system. Do you favor or oppose this proposal?" In December of 2004, before the debate began in earnest, 48 percent were in favor and 48 percent opposed. When the same question was asked in an April 1-2 survey, 56 percent were opposed and 39 percent in favor.
That decline in public support, despite an all-out marketing blitz from the White House, the well-funded conservative infrastructure, and Wall Street, led to the relatively quick unraveling of political backing for the plan. Like Frankenstein's monster, Social Security privatization is sure to come back from the dead some day. But for this year, at least, its demise was the best possible news.
Trying to list the multitude of lowlights that transpired would throw an unnecessary damper on what should be an occasion to celebrate. There's nothing to be gained by going back and cataloguing the egregiously misleading claims about the purported worthlessness of the U.S. Treasury Securities held in Social Security's trust funds, the calumnies about how the program is bad for women and minorities, or the falsehoods about how privatization would generate higher "rates of return" for workers while leaving them with significant assets to lead to their heirs.
Instead, let's choose for the worst moment of the 2005 Social Security debate one of the funniest. Conservative pollster Frank Luntz, whose focus groups had shown that the terms "privatization" and "private accounts" rubbed the public the wrong way, had not only urged supporters of the president's plan to use the term "personal accounts" instead but chastised journalists who didn't do the same thing. Even though the president himself and places like the Cato Institute that had pushed the idea for decades had always used the term "privatization," the term was now deemed to be inappropriate for journalists to use. Here's an entertaining exchange between Luntz and Joshua Micah Marshall of talkingpointsmemo.com on Al Franken's AirAmerica show back in January:
Marshall: Do you think it's fair for Democrats or reporters to use the word "privatization" or "private accounts" to describe the president's policy?
Luntz: I think it's fair for Democrats to do so.
Marshall: Why not the press?
Luntz: Because the press is making a pejorative statement.
Marshall: But wait, it's the phrase the president himself has used many, many times. Why is it pejorative?
Luntz: .If someone says, "Israel," I know that they're most likely to be a supporter. If someone uses the phrase "state of Israel," I know that they are creating a distance. If someone uses the phrase "private accounts" or "privatization," I have an idea of where they stand on Social Security and I'm usually right.
Marshall: But the president uses it.
Luntz: Used it.
Marshall: So as long as he stops using the word, that's the point at which reporters have to start using different verbiage?
Luntz: It's one of the reasons that the American people don't trust the media. If the media wants to engage in a debate, let them say so. Let them come on the shows that they do on Sundays and let them state a point of view but let people know that they're not getting a journalistic report but the opinion of a left wing or right wing individual.
What's in a name? That which we call privatization, by any other word still smelled foul to Americans in 2005. At least now, barring a miraculous turnaround, the failure of the Bush plan has salted the earth for privatization and shored up Social Security's political position for the foreseeable future.
Greg Anrig, Jr., is vice president for programs at The Century Foundation.
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