The Democrats on Social Security

In today's Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby disses the Democrats for refusing to discuss Social Security before the election.

A conservative group circulated a petition calling for bipartisan talks on Social Security, with all potential solutions to be part of the discussion. Rather than embracing this eminently sane idea, top Democrats in Congress loudly slammed the door on it.

There's a long tradition of demagoguery on entitlement reform, but refusing even to discuss the challenge plumbs new depths of cynicism. A decade ago, Democratic centrists such as Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska argued that runaway entitlement spending would rob the rest of the budget, draining money from social programs that liberals are supposed to care about. Today, a pragmatic Republican such as Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah can propose a progressive fix to Social Security that does not involve personal accounts. But Democrats won't come forward to support him.

In rejecting Social Security discussions last week, the Democrats painted the conservatives' petition as a Trojan horse designed to get personal accounts back onto the table. Even if that were true, since when was all mention of personal accountstaboo for Democrats? A decade ago, a majority of the appointees to Bill Clinton's Social Security commission came out in favor of personal accounts. Even the dissenting minority was open to the idea of investing Social Security funds in the stock market.

If today's Democratic leaders were even a little bit awake, they would realize that the case for Social Security reform has grown stronger since the Clinton era. It's not just that the budget outlook has deteriorated or that the squandering of a decade renders a solvency fix more urgent.

I say more about this below.