Conservatives have long dreamed about destroying Social Security

There's an article in today's Seattle Times (and, I imagine, a number of other newspapers) which talks about conservatives' longstanding desire to mess with or destroy Social Security.

A first excerpt:

The promise of secure retirements is a "hoax." Taxes paid by workers are "wasted" by the government rather than invested prudently. And "the so-called reserve fund ... is no reserve at all" because it contains nothing but government IOUs.

President Bush? No, Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon and his party's platform in 1936.

Bush's proposal to overhaul Social Security is the product of a conservative dream to undo the system that's as old as the program itself.

The hardline conservatives have always wanted to get rid of Social Security. But why? The answer seems simple: they don't believe there should be a safety net. These people seem to long for the 1920s, when Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover largely kept their hands off the economy.

And of course many of them believe in the theory of "trickle-down" economics: that what benefits the rich will benefit everyone else, too.

The Great Depression slammed the door on the prevalence of conservative ideology about government intervention in the economy. Americans cried out for help, begging the government to intervene to stop the depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt swept into office in 1932 with one of the largest mandates in American history. He implemented programs and reforms that helped give millions of Americans jobs. And he laid the groundwork to prevent another depression.

One of his landmark achievements was the Social Security program.

Conservatives hated it. Many thought of Social Security as some kind of "evil socialism" that didn't belong in America:

"Ever since the program was first created, conservatives understood it was a major expansion of the government," said Eric Patashnik, a University of Virginia political scientist. "And they've never liked that expansion."

Landon, of course, lost the 1936 election in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt, which reaffirmed the New Deal and set back the conservative cause severely. Roosevelt two years later boasted that Social Security already was a "permanent" part of the political system.

But the majority of the American people believed FDR. They believed in Social Security and what it stood for. And in the decades since, it has proved to be a hugely popular success. Many conservatives have always resented its success.

And so, decades ago, they began plotting on how to drastically change it, or even eliminate it. The plotting began in the 1960s with Barry Goldwater, who was soundly defeated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 presidential election. According to a historian, Michael Beschloss, Goldwater was supposed to have said, "perhaps Social Security should be abolished."

16 years after Goldwater's demise, Ronald Reagan swept into office:

[Reagan] signed a 1983 bailout that increased taxes and raised the retirement age to shore up the program.

That was when conservatives recognized their need for a long-term strategy keyed to offering people the benefits of making more money in private accounts, while making that option feel more mainstream and less risky.

"It's really after that that conservatives, particularly libertarians, began plotting for Social Security's eventual demise," Patashnik said. "They started laying the groundwork for the effort we see today by President Bush."

Peter Ferrera in 1980 wrote a detailed paper proposing private accounts that was published by a libertarian research center, the Cato Institute.

Influenced by Ferrera, Cato published a paper in 1983 that served as a political manifesto for turning over at least some of Social Security to the private sector.

It recommended:

• Consistent criticism of Social Security to undermine confidence;


• Building a coalition of supporters for private accounts, including banks and other financial institutions that would benefit;


• Assuring "those already retired or nearing retirement that their benefits will be paid in full";


• Legislation making private savings plans such as individual retirement accounts more available and thus more familiar.

Making it easier for more Americans to set up accounts, authors Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis said, would make "it in practice a small-scale, private Social Security system that can supplement the federal system. ... We will meet the next financial crisis in Social Security with a private alternative ready in the wings, an alternative with which the public is familiar and comfortable and one that has the backing of a powerful political force."

They are working right now to end Social Security as we know it. They are trying to sell this "reform", as they call it, to America, prepackaged, like they sold the Iraq war. And we cannot - we must not - let them get away with it. If these people should triumph in their crusade, FDR will tremble in his grave. And we will never be able to forgive ourselves for allowing these people to take us back to a 1920s like era of gambling money in the stock market.

It is up to us to prevent the destruction of Social Security. We can protect and preserve the integrity of Social Security if we all work together. We simply cannot allow the conservatives' dreams to become reality.

We cannot allow them to gamble with America's future.