Posted on 02/12/2005 11:03:01 AM PST by Republican Red
WASHINGTON (AP) - If there is a deal to made on Social Security, the broker may be a little-known South Carolina Republican who has been in the Senate for just two years.
While seniority usually carries the day in Congress, Sen. Lindsey Graham has assembled a small group of Democrats and Republicans with the intention of producing what no one else has: a bipartisan bill to add personal retirement accounts to Social Security.
Graham is an unlikely dealmaker. He is not chairman of any committee. He is not even on the committee that will write the bill. And he is no moderate.
First in the House and now in the Senate, Graham has compiled a solidly conservative voting record. He took on a partisan task as one of the House managers who presented the case for the impeachment of President Clinton.
"I can't say I ever would have thought of him taking the lead on this issue," said Derrick Max, who heads a business-backed coalition that advocates the private accounts.
Supporters of such accounts agree they will need the endorsement of lawmakers from both parties to get the bill passed, particularly in the Senate.
So far, only a few Senate Democrats - Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Thomas Carper of Delaware - have indicated even a willingness to consider President Bush's idea of letting people create private accounts with some of their Social Security taxes.
Graham hopes to change that. He has won particular attention by breaking with Republican orthodoxy to suggest that part of the solution will involve raising taxes.
"Why should I expect someone in this job to be braver than I want to be?" he asked in an interview. "I'm asking both parties to sacrifice their ideology for the common good."
He is willing to criticize Bush, at least gently, for failing to offer a comprehensive plan for the retirement program. "It's a fair criticism of the president to say he's talking about personal accounts in isolation from the problems they present," Graham said.
The affable Graham, who speaks in a steady Southern twang, traces his interest in Social Security to his own family. His parents were of modest means, and when he was in college, they died, a year apart. At 13, his sister moved in with their aunt and uncle and was supported by Social Security survivor benefits through college.
"We needed the money," Graham says.
Today, their aunt and uncle, now in their 70s, are retired, and their income comes from Social Security, a newspaper route and money Graham sends home to help out.
"I know first hand that we cannot let the system fail people who need it the most," he said.
Graham, 49, served 6 1/2 years on active duty as an Air Force lawyer before going into private law practice. He was elected to the House in 1994, when Newt Gingrich's GOP captured the House under the "Contract with America" campaign. When Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., retired after nearly a half-century in the Senate, Graham won his seat.
Graham became energized on Social Security during that 2002 Senate race when he was attacked for advocating private accounts. He won anyway and began working on a broad plan after taking office.
When Bush made Social Security his domestic priority for a second term, Graham was ready with a plan to create the accounts and fix Social Security's long-term finances - and he had ideas for how to get Democrats to join him.
Graham acknowledges that creating personal accounts does little to solve the program's long-term financial troubles.
Unlike Bush, the senator talks about the need to cut benefits, though he wants to soften the blow for older people on low income. But what has drawn the attention of policy-makers is Graham's suggestion that higher taxes help cover the cost of the transition to private accounts.
Under the current system, Social Security taxes are paid on only the first $90,000 of income. Graham suggests raising that cap, perhaps to $200,000, to make up some of the money that personal accounts would drain from the system. At the current Social Security tax rate of 6.2 percent, a $200,000 cap would mean someone with that income would be paying an additional $6,820 a year in taxes.
"I'm not designing a bill that will make Republicans jump up and down about me," Graham said.
Overall, Graham's ideas are squarely Republican. He firmly agrees with Bush that workers should have the ability to divert some of their payroll taxes into private accounts for investment in stocks and bonds.
Graham believes he can win Democratic support by structuring private accounts responsibly, protecting the poor and avoiding putting the government a trillion dollars more in debt to pay for transition to the new system.
"Eventually, we're going to have to pay for something," he said. "If I can get bipartisan support we're off to the races."
No Democrat has signed onto his legislation, but several keep coming back to Graham's behind-the-scenes meetings.
"He's playing an important role," Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said last week as he headed to one of the sessions. "He seems to have the guts to make a proposal."
Added Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which will write the legislation: "Anybody trying to get something together is playing a helpful role."
Other Democrats who have participated in the sessions include Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Nebraska's Nelson, Bill Nelson of Florida and Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
Also attending are two powerful Republicans - Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the Finance Committee chairman, and New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the Budget Committee chairman.
Even Republicans who dislike Graham's idea of raising the ceiling on Social Security taxes say his efforts are crucial to passing the bill.
"He's doing the hard work that it doesn't seem a lot of other members want to do," said Max, who heads the business-backed Alliance for Worker Retirement Security. "We're placing a lot of hope in his efforts."
Dittos to you NorCalRepub . There is no free ride in life . This will cost.Bush needs compromise.
By the way where is Nor Cal to you? I am about 2 hours north of Sacramento.
I'm in the Bay Area in Walnut Creek east and over the hills from SF and Oakland......been all over Calif and have lived in San Diego, LA Basin and in the high desert in Victoville but grew up in the Oakland Hills....where are you exactly? I've been all over Calif and know most parts of it
From the article it looks like the AP is already pushing it.
Lindsay Graham is becoming the libs favorite Republican. It's reported that Hellery loves him. Why? He wants to raise taxes...yep, taking the $90K cap off SS "contributions" (ie: confiscations)IS a tax increase. And Dems are all for it.
Just today I was reading that Bozo Boxer was telling Seniors that there is no social security crisis, and this is a woman who prides herself on calling others liars.
YOU SAID, "But if this is what it takes to get sixty votes for Social Security reform and personal accounts, I'm not averse to doing it."
Also, if you are allowed to direct a portion your total “contribution” (don’t you just love that word) to your own personal account – then at least some of the actual tax increase will be funneled into your own account.
It is not exactly what I would want, but sometimes governance is the “art of the possible – not the perfect.”
I wish someone would explain that Social Security is basically a system of using one credit card to pay off another, and cycling the debt as long as possible. Stopping the debt cycle will cause a major impact on cash flow, but won't "cost" anything--they money was already spent when the debt was incurred, and then more was spent servicing it. Repayment of spent is not a "cost", despite its impact on cash flow.
I agree. Reluctantly so, but I agree.
It's now our turn to practice "incrementalism". But, instead of "creeping socialism", we'll pursue a course of "creeping capitalism".
And, eventually, everybody will be better off -- except the lefties consumed by their own hatred.
Nothing from that months' worth of collection is spent nor given out in any form.
After the month, regular payments recontinued, but the interest realized from that one month's investment was left to ride and roll over.
Couldn't/wouldn't the resulting sum after say ... 1 or 2 years come close to handling all or most of what SS is doing now?
And how do we 'pay out' during that month of investment?
The same way it's done now ... with phoney money and printed chits/vouchers and etc.'s.
Like I said, I haven't really been able to think this thing through, but I got the idea from an IRA I started 5 yrs ago with 560. bucks, dropped to less than two in a short time in early 2000's but is growing now, and I haven't contributed a dfime into it since I started it.
I don't know how long it would take if I just let it ride, and I might just do that just to see what happens, but ... well ... just my two cent's worth.
Seems to me the numbers game, with compounded interest utilizing the US populations' SS deductions could potentially pay off waaaayyyy big.
I really would like some commentary on this.
The seniors who didn't get their Social Security checks would lynch whomever had proposed such a thing.
Sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes, there is even a year-to-year decline. But understand that there has never been any rolling ten-year period in American history that overall stock prices have gone down!
Even during the depths of the Great Depression, stock values in 1933 were higher than they had been in 1923.
The administration hasn't cited the fact yet (and probably won't), but the pool of investment capital created by personal accounts should stimulate investment in the economy and generate sufficient continued growth that new revenues might go a long way toward closing the unfunded liability in the Social Security "Trust Fund".
So glad you approve of raising taxes, however, I suggest you're in the wrong pew.
Oops, you're lost....this is not DU.
I understand that, and maybe a month's worth is unrealistic but perhaps a percentage of the overall ... 'skimmed' and put into a real interest producing lock box.
What about that?
If none of the month's receipts are spent or given out in any form, where are the seniors' checks supposed to come from?
If your question is where does the money come from, I understand 'money' is a confusing concept, at best, and if SS is being paid NOW as an IOU ... a filiment of one's imageration ... what's the difference?
These raised taxes wouldn't even be used for Social Security - they would be spent on something else. Bad idea, Senator Graham, for more than one reason.
What about that?
At 2%, the current program allocates roughly 1/6 to personal accounts. Your proposal would be 1/12. Both would be subject to increase over time.
The question then becomes who is responsible for the investment decision on those funds in the lock box?
Recall that Clinton actually proposed personal accounts as a means of "saving Social Security". However, in his model, it was the Washington bureaucrats and politicians who would decide how (and where) the money was to be invested.
Consider the power to extort contained within that power. Which, of course, was what Clinton was all about -- running a shakedown racket.
So, if your lockbox plan incorporated self-directed personal accounts with something like the five low-cost funds offered by the government's own Thrift Savings Plan, it would be no different structurally than the current proposal. It would just be of a more modest scope.
So someone that is a strong proponent of conservative principles is for the "party line" but someone that the MSM glowingly praises and Dems circulate around is an "Independent thinker".
Sure.
I don't care what the guy has done in past. Lately he's been curving toward the McCain & hagel clique and these are not people I admire. They are opportunists. They want facetime on the MSM, and they want the Dems to curry favor with them. They will abandon conservative principles they "claim" to be in favor of for this feeling of approval and acceptance.
He is working with the Dems to attempt to make tax hikes a necessity to get this reform passed. He knows as every conservative does that the minute the President starts hiking taxes he is going to get savaged by the MSM and his base. In exchange this Senator has properly cut a deal for a few bookings on Meet The press and who knwos what else.
You admire this "maverick" if you please. I refuse to.
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