On his official Web site, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., proclaims that he "never strays from the conservative reform agenda." Well, now he has — in a dramatic way, and in a way that should infuriate every Republican who has ever voted for him.
On March 9, The Washington Post reported that Graham had claimed during a meeting with writers and editors from The Post that personal retirement accounts as a means of transforming Social Security are a "sideshow."
Republicans "made a strategic mistake," Graham said, in focusing on personal accounts. And Graham incriminates others who have been pushing personal accounts by saying "it's (personal accounts) always been a sideshow, but we sold it as the main event ... we're off in a ditch over a sideshow."
This is a betrayal of mind-boggling proportions to his party, his president and the movement he claims to spearhead in the Senate.
For 25 years, conservative and free-market think tanks and advocacy organizations have been making the case for Social Security reform, saying that it is wrong for the government to force workers to contribute to a system of forced retirement savings and then to give them a lousy return. We've told them that the Social Security system was in trouble, and that personal retirement accounts were the solution.
Poll results have shown that these arguments make sense to the American people. But the most important poll is on election day, and on the last several election days Republicans have run and won on these arguments.
Unfortunately, as soon as Social Security reform became a political possibility, Sen. Graham started looking at reform from the government's perspective, rather than from the perspective of those who are forced to pay 12.4 percent of their earnings into a system that renders them a return below the rate of inflation. Instead of focusing on giving taxpayers a better deal, Graham advocates cutting benefits, raising payroll taxes and forcing retirees to work longer and pay into a failing system even longer.
It's no wonder that the public is confused, and is losing its enthusiasm for reform. So-called reformers like Graham have pulled a giant bait-and-switch. He inherited 25 years of work in support of personal accounts, but is now ditching the accounts in favor of an approach that gives government, not taxpayers, a better deal.
It is precisely this kind of green-eyeshade, bean-counting, pain-inflicting approach that convinced our current president's father to break his "no new taxes" pledge. Graham and his ilk are leading our current president in the same direction, pressuring him to "set aside" personal accounts, abandon his "no payroll tax increase" pledge and cut benefits to retirees.
Let's reset for a minute: The problem with Social Security is not that benefits are too high, or that payroll taxes are too low. Social Security does not promise too much. Social Security delivers too little.
The point of personal retirement accounts has always been to give American workers a much better return on their forced savings contributions, fixing Social Security's liability problem and creating a new pool of investment capital in the process. The point has never been to simply restore the system to solvency. That's easy to do with tax increases and benefit cuts. Sen. Graham gets no points for imagination or creativity for proposing what Democrats have been proposing for decades.
But is there any proposal for reforming Social Security that lives up to 20 years of rhetoric, and that would appeal sufficiently to voters? A proposal that, for instance, neither cuts benefits nor raises taxes? A solution that guarantees every single American worker at least as much as they would have received under the existing Social Security system, but delivers much more?
There is such a proposal. The Social Security Administration itself scored last year's Ryan-Sununu legislation as completely eliminating the trust-fund liability and giving workers a better return than they get from the current system. The Social Security chief actuary has also scored three other proposals that entirely solve Social Security's problems through personal accounts alone, without benefit cuts or tax increases.
Sen. Graham is either unfamiliar with or willingly ignorant of this important work done by the Social Security Administration, paid for with taxpayer dollars. He should spend a few hours studying it, or spend his time working on something else.
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Tom Giovanetti is President of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI).