Social Security Takes Center Stage

Even leading Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan now supports partial privatization.

by Rod D. Martin
April 13, 1998

The President last week finally kept a promise: he addressed the issue of Social Security reform.

But it should surprise no one that the President's idea of "reform" is more talk than substance: that is the way of this White House. When Mr. Clinton announced his intention to deal with the issue in his State of the Union address, his platitude-laden speech served plenty of notice to this effect. (It also ignored the fact -- pointed out in the Republican leadership's response -- that Social Security's computers are not Year 2000 compliant and, if not fixed, will shut down the entire system twenty months from now.) Now the details, such as they are, give confirmation: the "fix" is to be more of the same: more big government, more big taxes. Privatization in particular is labeled as "radical," which is to say, off-limits.

Why might the President even mention the "dangerous fringe notion" of privatization? Because even his liberal supporters have taken up the ca…