Special Report

Savings are low, debt is mounting, the dollar is weak, and the economy is projected to grow more slowly in this century than the last. But that’s not the half of it. What we really have to worry about, according to a chorus of prophets, is the prospect of Americans living too long. This failure […]

The most profound, and profoundly disturbing, innovation in budget policy during the administration of George W. Bush has been to discard the old-fashioned notion that presidents who propose a tax cut or new spending should also propose some way to pay for it. That practice, apparently, is just soooo 20th century. Observers of this administration’s […]

In the wake of his 2004 victory, President Bush seems poised to challenge the axiom that Social Security is the third rail of American politics. Democratic Party leaders will be making a very serious mistake if they believe that Americans will rush to the barricades to fight the president’s privatization proposals. Blocking his radical attack […]

The art of building consensus out of the “vague and confusing medley” of individual opinions, Walter Lippmann wrote in The Phantom Public, consists in narrowing issues to a few simplified alternatives that can be reduced to “symbols which assemble emotions after they have been detached from their ideas.” It would be hard to go any […]

Amid the clatter over “saving” Social Security, it’s instructive to look back 22 years — to a time when an imperiled program was saved by a true bipartisan compromise. Then, as now, a newly emboldened GOP was rewriting the agenda in Washington. But then, unlike now, each side sacrificed for long-term gain. As the 1980s […]

The epic social security battle of 2005 will boil down to two questions: which side will do a more effective job getting its message out to voters, and which party can enforce the tighter discipline in Congress. Seemingly, the circumstances favor the Republicans, who have the bully pulpit of the White House, almost infinite financial […]

The word from President Bush and his minions is that Social Security is on its last legs, facing imminent danger of bankruptcy. Fortunately, Bush is prepared to rescue this antiquated program by offering workers the opportunity to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. He would like us to believe that […]

President Bush claims the 2004 election gave him a mandate to pursue his No. 1 second-term priority, the partial privatization of Social Security. But the voters don’t think so. Only 35 percent of Americans think Bush has a mandate “to allow workers to invest some of their Social Security taxes in the stock market,” while […]

Why does the United States and every other developed nation have a system of social-insurance pensions? The simple answer is that social insurance is intended to ensure basic income to those no longer able to work. These include the elderly, the disabled, orphans, and widows and widowers with small children. “Ensure” means that incomes must […]

For nearly three-quarters of a century, Americans have taken Social Security for granted. Now we had better learn how it works, what it has done, and what the true facts are regarding its future — or else we are going to lose it. Superficially, Social Security resembles traditional employer pensions: Americans pay into the system […]