Widows and orphans

[I]t will be hard to get Democratic votes for a bill that includes personal accounts. Democrats oppose them for the same reason that Republicans support them: because they think the accounts will create Republicans. People who have them will start thinking like investors.

It better be damned near impossible for Democrats to support a bill that includes personal accounts, but it has nothing to do with the "investor class." What decade is Brooks living in? According to the Securities Industries Association,

According to Equity Ownership in America, a survey commissioned by SIA and Investment Company Institute, a total of 84.3-million individuals owned equities in early 2002. This figure accounts for an estimated 52.7 million, or 49.5 percent of all American households. In 1983, only 42.4 million individuals owned equities.

That seems pretty broadly dispersed, and if Democrats are committed, as the idiot infers, to keeping Americans chained to government handouts, then demographics are surely getting in the way. But, typically, that is a Brooksian strawman.

Michael Laracey of the Annie E. Casey foundation, offers a bit of sanity to counter Brooks's ravings on the same page, and reminds us of why Social Security is effective, popular, and absolutely vital.

Understandably, almost all of the debate about Social Security reform has focused on the effects on future retirees or on the federal budget deficit. This overlooks the role of Social Security as a life and disability insurance program, one that provides vital benefits to spouses and more than five million American children in families whose breadwinner died prematurely or became disabled. Benefit changes that may be tolerable for future retirees could have devastating consequences for these survivors.

When the federal government created both welfare and Social Security during the Great Depression, it envisioned welfare as a temporary program. Eventually, policy makers believed, Social Security would replace both welfare and the numerous underfinanced state programs for widows and orphans. They were wrong about welfare, but they were right about Social Security.

Today, more children rely on Social Security benefits for part of their family income than on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the nation's main cash welfare program. These benefits represent a substantial share of these families' total income for child beneficiaries. If someone earning $32,000 a year, close to the national average, dies at the age of 40, annual benefits for his three children would be $25,000, replacing roughly 78 percent of his earnings. That's not exactly comfortable, but it's a lot better than the federal poverty level, which is about $19,000 for a family of four.

So, yes, it had better difficult for Republicans to get Dems to sign on to a privatization of Social Security (and we should hold to the fire the feet of any
Dem that caves on this). And that, David, is because it is not a goddamned 401k plan. It is Social Security you mendacious fool!

Meanwhile, Jim Vanderhei takes a close look at Bush's idea of "crisis management" -- inventing crises to get his policies enacted. Following the looming mushroom cloud that Iraq posed during the run-up to war, Bush's new crises are Social Security (for which his solution -- private accounts -- will do nothing to avert), medical malpractice (for which caps for "pain and suffering" are like a hangnail for the cancer patient that is our healthcare system), and judicial appointments (a "vacency crisis" in which Democrats blocked 10 of Bush's 229 first term appointments).