Gene Lyons...God I love this guy!! (In a literary way, of course...)

Fully automatic banana cream pies locked,

loaded



by Gene Lyons



Posted on Wednesday, February 2, 2005



I swear if I hear one more twentysomething in a power suit smugly

assure a TV interviewer how much better they can handle their

money than (snicker) Social Security, things could get ugly. Lately,

I’ve been fantasizing about storming a Starbucks armed with fully

automatic banana cream pies. "Eat this, yuppie scum!" Listening to

these Young Republicans is like hearing your 18-year-old tell you

he doesn’t need a seat belt because his reflexes are so superior

he couldn’t possibly have an accident. I recently saw some puppy

on CBS News boasting about his investment acumen. I couldn’t tell

if he was another ringer like last month’s CBS poster child for Social

Security "reform." They softpedaled the fact that Tad DeHaven,

who opined that he’d never see a dime due to Social Security’s

inevitable collapse, works for the National Taxpayers Union, a

tycoon-funded Washington think tank devoted to the premise

that government benefit checks ruin the character of the roughly

50 percent of old-timers with no other income. Mr. Confident

Investor was 27. I couldn’t help noticing that he looked like the

"before" half of a Hair Club for Men commercial.



Which has nothing to do with anything, except that I doubt premature

baldness was part of his life plan. But get rear-ended on the freeway

and end up paralyzed? Have a stroke or disabling heart attack? A child

with cerebral palsy? Work for a company that crashes, voiding his stock

options? Lose his 401 (k) in the next Enron or WorldCom fiasco? Not

him, no way. He’s a winner. Social Security’s for losers.



Look, punk, it’s an insurance policy, not an IRA. But there’s a reason

we’re seeing all these boy-in-the-street interviews, and it’s not

simply polls showing that high percentages of young people believe that

Social Security is doomed. (Some also show that only 26 percent of

Americans 18 to 34 read newspapers, which explains a lot.) Presenting

opinions instead of facts makes it easier to avoid mentioning that President

Bush’s campaign to "privatize" the most successful government program

in U.S. history is based entirely upon shameless falsehoods.



Whoops, I’ve used obsolete terminology. "Privatize" was last year’s

buzzword. Apparently because it worried voters that Republicans were

fixing to give Social Security a ride on a Wall Street roulette wheel,

the mandatory new phrase is "personal accounts." Bush recently scolded

Washington Post reporters for using the forbidden word, only to have

them show that he himself touted "privatization" just months ago.



To reiterate the tedious facts: According to the Congressional Budget

Office, the Social Security Trust Fund, which has accumulated huge

surpluses since the Reagan administration increased payroll taxes in

1983, contains enough money to fully fund benefits until 2052. Even

then, current revenues could pay 81 percent of projected benefits

indefinitely.



Social Security’s own actuaries predict a somewhat earlier shortfall,

based upon extremely pessimistic assumptions about budget growth—about

which more in a moment.



What we have here is an accounting problem that Congress can solve with

a few nips and tucks of the kind it’s been making in Social Security

for the last 70 years. Instead, Bush throws around words like "bankrupt," "

flat broke" and "busted." He shamefully (and falsely) tells black

Americans that they’re getting screwed because they don’t live as long

as white folks. (Longevity stats reflect infant death rates more than

adult life expectancy. Besides, black women outlive white men by any

measure.)



Bush’s acolytes throw around fake numbers like Social Security’s

supposed $10 trillion deficit. Know where they got that one? They

projected the system’s post-2052 shortfall to infinity. Literally. If

no actuarial changes are made and the United States endures until

the end of time, there’ll be one heckuva tax bill due.



More fun with numbers: See, when the Bushies predict shortfalls, they

use the Social Security Administration’s pessimistic 1.8 percent annual

economic growth projections (far below the 75-year average of 3.4

percent). Yet in calculating the wondrous benefits of

privatizooops!—personal accounts, they predict 6.5-7 percent stock

market earnings for all. You don’t need a Ph. D. in economics, like New

York Times columnist Paul Krugman, to realize that both things can’t be

true. Assume that kind of growth and predicted Social Security

shortfalls vanish. Bush dances around the issue, but GOP propagandists

such as Stephen Moore of the "Club for Growth" argue that the Social

Security Trust Fund is a myth. They say the special-issue Treasury

bonds in it—each backed by "the full faith and credit of the United States

"—are nothing but" worthless IOUs, "" accounting tricks, "etc. Here’s

what the U.S. Constitution says:" The validity of the public debt of

the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment

of pensions shall not be questioned. " Maybe Democrats should get

aggressive for a change. How about a congressional resolution forcing

Bush’s hand?



• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient 

of the National Magazine Award.