In recent years, Social Security has been called the "third rail" of American politics. So powerful are the nation's 35 million elderly citizens, when mobilized, that few politicians are willing during a campaign to suggest any changes in the basic structure and benefits of the Social Security program founded in the early days of the New Deal.
At the same time, Republicans (and many conservative Democrats) continue to warn ominously that the system is headed for bankruptcy as baby boomers -- that quadrant of the population whose members were born after the end of World War II and before the 1960s -- reach retirement. Boomers, after all, caused a boom in school construction, university enrollment, employment and the economy. Now, the argument runs, they will cause a bust in Social Security, which will begin paying their benefits in 2011. Projections by the Social Security Administration and various conservative think tanks (always based upon the assumption of no change in the funding of Social Security) predict that by 2018, the Social Security Trust Fund will be paying out more than it takes in -- and that, by 2042, the fund of worker and employer payroll-tax contributions will be "exhausted." Payments by current workers then would only cover 73 percent of anticipated benefits.
Current workers, including many boomers, understandably find such talk scary. Boomers, whose retirement plans have been trashed by the last stock-market crash, are understandably worried: Will Social Security be there for them?
Conservatives and business lobbyists have been quick to play to these fears with proposals to privatize the system. Overlooked, though, amid all the scare talk is that for the very reason boomers will be burdening the system -- their sheer numbers -- they will also become an unprecedented political force that can guard and even improve it.
Consider this: In 2000, seniors and people over the age of 65, as powerful an electoral block as they were, represented only 17 percent of this country's voting-age population. By 2025, however, when the tidal wave of baby boomers will be in the 65-80 age bracket, retirees will represent 24.5 percent of the voting-age population, an increase of 45 percent in relative voting power. If those aged 55-64 are added in -- a reasonable assumption, as people who reach 55 are starting to think about their retirement and tend to vote more in line with the interests of actual retirees -- the elderly and the near elderly will by then represent fully 40 percent of the electorate. That's a 40 percent increase over the 28.5 percent of the electorate this group represented in 2000.
But there's more to this impending surge in senior power than just numbers.
A person who is 80 today was born in 1923 and reached adulthood during the Second World War. Someone 65 was born in 1938 and reached adulthood in the late 1950s. These people, the parents of today's baby boomers, were the politically quiescent folk who raised families in the 1950s and '60s, liked Ike and listened to Perry Como.
Many seniors of 2025 will be folks who cut their political teeth in the 1960s and '70s, opposed the war in Indochina and fought for equal rights for women, the right to abortion and the right for minorities to vote. These are people who listened to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead.
True, the boomer generation has been politically diverse -- even apolitical -- in recent years, but this is likely because its members have gone in a variety of directions and have diverse interests. With retirement approaching, however, they are likely to converge again around a common issue -- a secure retirement -- that will rival or even exceed the one they had back in the '60s of opposing the draft and the war. When that happens, their electoral power will become enormous.
This may explain the almost frantic efforts by business interests and conservatives to attack the foundations of Social Security with privatization schemes. Aware that a decade from now baby boomers will start demanding bigger Social Security payouts and improvements in the system's finances -- along with progressive reforms such as eliminating the cap on income that is subject to the payroll tax, or shifting the tax off of workers and onto employers, who currently split it 50-50 -- these forces are hoping to undermine the program before they get even there.
Says 60-year-old Tim Fuller, executive director of the Gray Panthers, a longtime activist organization of the elderly, "The right knows that this is going to be a powerful issue when our generation reaches retirement, and they're busy now trying to dismantle Social Security as a universal program and to erect a privatized system in its place, so that when our generation does finally focus on it, we'll have to dismantle what they've done and re-create Social Security from scratch."
As Fuller sees it, the sooner boomers realize that thanks to their growing political clout Social Security will be whatever they want it to be in years to come, the sooner they can rally to improve its financial condition, the easier needed reforms will be and the more they'll be able to demand from the system in the future. (Example: In 2042, it would take a 49 percent increase in the payroll tax to fund the projected benefits shortfall. Today, a tiny 1.9 percent rise in the payroll tax, split between employer and employee, would fund the system fully through 2075.)
That awareness may start coming soon.
Says Tom Hayden, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society and now a grizzled member of the California legislature: "'60s people were tempted, under [Bill] Clinton, to buy into the conservative warnings that Social Security might go bankrupt, and that maybe it should be privatized. But with the recent Enron scandals, I think perhaps they're getting religion regarding Social Security. I think that generation will be inclined now to fight to preserve it. At 63, I'm probably one of the oldest of the '60s generation, and I'm certainly starting to think about my Social Security retirement benefits."
The interesting thing to contemplate is the probable broader impact of a boomer movement to improve Social Security. Because Social Security has always been universal, rather than need based, improving it would mean dramatically improving the lives of the poor and the disabled. Carried over into Medicare, an offshoot of the Social Security retirement program, such a movement could easily lead, finally, to some kind of national health system.
The potential is there, if boomers wake up to it, for a real senior revolution.
Dave Lindorff's most recent book is Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
