OLEAN -- Two Yuletide predictions:
Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2004.
Social Security reform will be one of the imminent presidential election's main issues.
OK, OK, so these aren't particularly daring -- but they do run against the grain of current conventional wisdom.
The majority of political prognosticators think the former first lady and U.S. senator from New York is merely setting up a juggernaut run in 2008 with conventional methods -- raising tons of money for current Democratic candidates at numerous cozy events in "Whitehaven" (her posh Georgetown colonial home), collecting political "tickets" by assisting campaign appearances for current Democratic strivers, turning into a party rock star who rescues poorly subscribed funding dinners with last-minute appearances that draw salivating sellout crowds, infiltrating big liberal groups with known Clinton loyalists.
Some of the conventional thinking goes like this:
Hillary will replace the much-criticized Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) as Senate Minority Leader after President Bush -- aided by a rebounding economy -- thrashes whichever of the Democratic Primary dwarfs is thrown at him next year. Then she will reinvigorate mopey congressional Democrats with spirited leadership and legislation, making a bigger national name for herself in this bully pulpit as 2008 looms and Bush keeps shooting himself in the political foot as the economy inevitably sours and Democratic support for change solidifies.
Even Rush Limbaugh promulgates this scenario, and he's recently off drugs.
But ... I'm not soooo sure.
Consider:
Just before the weekend, Hillary went on the offense, traveling to Texas to launch her most acerbic attack yet on George W. Bush -- painting him as an "extremist" who is waaaaay far right of even his father, and whose agenda will cause the nation "irreparable harm" in almost every facet of governance. His health care reforms will cause lower- and middle-class health care to "wither on the vine," she predicted. Her flacks claim she went to Texas to promote her book. Riiiiiight.
Over Thanksgiving, Hillary flew to Iraq in what promised to be a favorable headline bonanza -- Big Liberal Senator Still Cares Enough About Our Fighting Men and Women to Make Patriotic Trip to Dangerous Hellhole. But, lo and behold, after hoodwinking the White House press corps into believing he was eating turkey at his Texas ranch, President Dubya, under top secrecy, also shows up in Baghdad -- impressing most Americans with his cujones and totally eclipsing Hillary's road show, relegating her to the jump pages.
Here's a question: Would Bush have snuck into the Middle East on Thanksgiving if Hillary hadn't? Are Bush advisers so afraid of her they're willing to risk real-danger rocket grenade attacks on the chief executive? Or am I just overwrought?
Hillary has resurrected her Iraq experiences to boast about being briefed by women generals. Get it? The subtle message you're supposed to be receiving from her is WOMEN ARE GOOD EXECUTIVES AND ONE COULD MAKE A GOOD PRESIDENT, TOO.
Notice, too, that the Draft Hillary 2004 Campaign has not yet been instructed by the New York senator to stand down and shut up. It is rolling right along with a national petition to send her "the best Christmas present of all."
The money is there for her asking. The Clintons have already woven longtime supporters into the various liberal groups that have received serious support from billionaire Bush-hater George Soros -- some 9 billion pounds (about $15 million-plus) in recent months. She draws gargantuan financial support -- and fast -- when she says the word. In 2000, she raised $41 million quickly despite predictions she would stumble over her carpet-bag in New York. When she agrees to last-minute rescues of events for the current crop of Democratic ditherers, she sells about 8,000 top-price tickets in three days -- a performance that raises the eyebrows of even Republican fat cats. And she's kept the Democratic Senate campaign committee fund-raising almost even with the GOP's similar effort, a rare feat.
While in Texas on Friday, she took pains to call the president "beatable," all to help the current Democratic aspirants, of course. Riiiight again.
Many prominent Democrats are quietly despairing over the 2004 White House contest because they fear the current primary participants are all vulnerable to Bush's quarter-of-a-billion dollars and jugular-seeking political operatives. Putative leader of the pack, former Vermont governor Howard Dean, likely will be flayed alive by conservatives for receiving a sore-back service deferment during the Vietnam War years, then going skiing for a year. That may sound silly to many folks, but it could work in a time of terrorism -- even if the strategy flunked when applied to Bill Clinton.
Now Clinton's wife is being pushed to run by more and more prominent liberals. Influential "Vanity Fair" editor Graydon Carter last week described her as the only available savior of her party and urged she run "right now." If she did, he said, "she could beat Bush" -- whose administration Carter termed "as fundamentalist as the Islamics."
This urgency, though, itself reveals a political fear concerning Hillary. If she waits until 2008, it means she has to run again in New York for the Senate in 2006, and Republicans, knowing she'd possess immense momentum, would spend all they had to -- a campaign fortune -- to defeat her and remove her from the national picture.
We all know she'd love to be the first woman president. I think she's going to run -- now.
Whoever the contestants, they will be talking about Social Security reform -- privatization of the venerable program.
President Bush has been hinting that, if re-elected, he intends to make the subject a key legislative effort in his second term, and big conservative think tanks and work-related institutions are starting to publicize stands and studies -- a sure sign of White House intentions. Last week, the Institute for Policy Innovation in Washington proposed a privatization plan for Social Security that would allow taxpayers to contribute a hefty percentage of mandatory retirement deductions into individually controlled personal savings accounts, PSAs, or private investment accounts, PIAs.
Workers would be able to contribute 5 to 10 percent of the current 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax to these personal accounts. Supporters of privatization can show you scads of studies that the return would be much, much more over the years than the Social Security payout -- even if you put the money into conservative investments. But labor unions, most of the Democratic presidential candidates and many older Americans believe risking retirement funds on the stock market and other private investing areas is foolhardy -- better to let the federal government handle it, like Franklin Roosevelt had in mind. (Even Hillary, on her Texas trip, described such New Deal measures as the "central pillars of progress in our country.")
Bush had planned to make PSAs and PIAs a legislative keystone of his first term, but the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the ensuing economic slump and collapse of stock markets, and big corporate scandals like Enron changed all that. If the economy keeps rebounding, Bush will be talking about this plenty come next year and the presidential campaign.
Studies vary, but if factors stay equal, Social Security will probably go into the red ink again -- meaning paying out more in benefits than can be collected in taxes -- somewhere around 2018. When this current year ends in three weeks, the Social Security Administration will have cut $470 billion in checks to 47 million Americans.
There are many misperceptions about this, and the subject is burning up Internet chat rooms. (One resurrected rumor in this traffic is that members of Congress pay no Social Security taxes. They have since 1984.) Here are some clarifications to common thinking:
First of all, there is no Social Security Fund, as such. There is simply a mammoth pile of federal IOUs and the numbers that swirl about this worrisome subject all rely on future tax collections and national economic performance and projections.
Everything is a shifting target, and once the Baby Boomers start to retire in force, watch out. Even the current meager payouts were supported, mainly, by a 3-to-1 worker-to-recipient ratio during past decades. With more Americans retiring and fewer Americans working, that means the current ratio is rapidly approaching 1-to-1, an unsustainable formula. And the worst aspect is, even responsible old folks can't plan ahead with any accuracy. Case in point: me.
I once thought I could wait until full Social Security benefits were available at 65 to claim any, instead of starting to receive skimpier checks when eligible at 62. The target keeps shifting, however. Many corporations have concocted retirement plans that drop off dramatically in payout when one turns 62 -- in assumption the hard-pressed retiree will claim his Social Security checks at first eligibility, no matter how drastically reduced they are, thus forcing the retiree to do so. And the age at which full benefits are available keeps floating into the ever more distant future.
This is because the morons who run Washington can come up with no better solutions to their fund deficit problem than to constantly increase withholding taxes and then postpone the benefit ages. I was born in 1942. I'm already up to 66 years and 10 months before I can take a full Social Security check. By the time I am that age, the full benefit marker will obviously be older -- probably over 70.
Writing on the wall: I will work until I croak.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 9 2003 |