Can Anyone Unseat F.D.R.?

WASHINGTON — To some Republicans, the start of this presidential term is their moment, their chance to become the permanent majority party with a new vision that goes by various names: the ownership society, the Conservative New Deal, the New New Deal.

But can they really significantly trim seven decades of ever-growing programs? Can the New Deal government be rolled back?

Even some devout conservatives doubt that this can happen, and not only because of Democratic opposition. The skeptics believe that most Americans are unwilling to change the only kind of government that most of them have ever known.

After all, Americans love to talk about self-reliance, but they also love to vote for politicians who have been providing them with pensions, disability checks, health benefits, farm subsidies and other payments that have kept the government expanding through Republican as well as Democratic administrations, and especially during Mr. Bush's first term.

Even during the Reagan years, when domestic spending slowed, many Republicans considered it politically suicidal to attack seriously the culture of entitlements. Invoking what Jude Wanniski, the supply-side advocate, called the Two Santa Claus Theory, they resolved to compete with Democrats by cutting taxes instead of taking away benefits, the idea being that they would never succeed by playing Grinch.

Some of the regulatory apparatus of the New Deal was dismantled during the Carter and Reagan administrations, but since then there's been relatively little deregulation and lots of trees killed to print new rules in The Federal Register. The welfare rolls were reduced in the 1990's, but the disability rolls were swelled by workers who learned how to qualify for lifetime income supports and free medical coverage.

The Republicans can point to some steps toward self-reliance, like the rise of 401(k) and other personal retirement accounts in place of corporate pensions, and the expansion of personal health-savings accounts in the latest Medicare bill. But that Medicare bill championed by Mr. Bush also contained a prescription drug benefit that was the costliest new entitlement in decades.

As they now take on Social Security, Republicans are counting on a more independent group of Americans, who are comfortable with placing their savings in the financial markets. And if Americans can be weaned from the Democrats' most cherished social program, the Republicans figure, the federal government will never be the same.

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," said Stephen Moore, the former president of Club for Growth, an antitax group. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

Democrats are betting that Mr. Bush's proposal will backfire with voters loath to risk any of their retirement money.

"We need a strong safety net," Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts said in a recent speech. Vowing to defeat the proposal, he echoed Roosevelt's denunciations of stock-market speculators by declaring, "We will not let any president turn the American dream into a nightmare for senior citizens and a bonanza for Wall Street."

President Bush is careful not to sound that menacing. In his inaugural speech, he promised that the new ownership society would make "every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny," but quickly explained that this would provide "greater freedom from want and fear" - a purposeful echo of the same guarantees that Roosevelt made for the New Deal.

And given the popularity of Social Security, virtually no one is suggesting going back to the laissez-faire retirement days before the New Deal. Senator John Sununu, Republican from New Hampshire, said "the prospect for reforming Social Security is better than it has been in decades." But he also said any alterations would undoubtedly offer some guaranteed minimum pension from the government.

Americans are wary of change. Some polls have found that allowing private Social Security accounts is favored by a majority of Americans, with support especially high among young people, but the support drops when pollsters mention that private accounts could be risky. If asked to choose between a system with private accounts and a system with guaranteed benefits, people tend to prefer the guaranteed payments.

But then, people also repeatedly tell pollsters they're not sure they can count on guaranteed payments from Social Security. In the New York Times/CBS News poll conducted from Jan. 14 to Jan. 18, only a quarter of the respondents said that Social Security could be fixed with minor changes, while half said it needed fundamental changes and a quarter said it needed to be completely redone.

"There's so much softness in response to questions on Social Security because the public hasn't really made up its mind," said Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center. "There are a lot of conflicting sentiments, and which strain of thinking comes out on top depends on the struggle for public opinion this year."

Edward H. Crane, the president of the Cato Institute, said the way for Mr. Bush to win that fight is to emulate Ronald Reagan.

"Reagan tapped into a basic American sentiment that frightens the establishment figures, who assumed everyone wants the government to run their lives," said Mr. Crane, who has been promoting private Social Security accounts for more than two decades. "That New Deal was a sharp departure from the traditional American respect for the individual. If Bush plays this correctly - and Karl Rove is a very smart guy who's looked at the same polls we have - he can win simply by arguing that a private account gives you control over your retirement instead of making you dependent on 535 politicians."

But Americans also tend to be suspicious of radical reform, as Newt Gingrich discovered after he became speaker of the House of Representatives and tried to enact his Contract With America.

In his new book, "Winning the Future," Mr. Gingrich promotes the private accounts for Social Security and health care. But he cautions Republicans not to scare voters with any talk of reducing Social Security benefits.

"If you frame the private Social Security accounts as giving your children the right to choose, as opposed to cutting benefits or forcing anyone to do anything, I think it's a total winner for us," Mr. Gingrich said in an interview. "The accounts will create the first 100 percent capitalist society in history. Fifty years from now, relatively poor Americans for the first time will have their own personal savings; they'll see the power of interest buildup over time and appreciate the importance of property."

And in the end, even if Mr. Bush doesn't make much progress toward his ownership society in this session of Congress, some believe that he is gradually transforming Washington, setting the stage for changes the way that Ronald Reagan made possible changes to the welfare system in the following decade.

"The changes have been done in a kind of disaggregated way," Mr. Spratt said. "People will only see the trend looking backward some years from now. The trend is towards less government, fewer benefit programs and significant changes in those that exist."

But others doubt that even gradual change is possible - or, for that matter, really desired by Republicans seeking re-election.

"The ownership society sounds good and grand, but I don't see it has much substance," said Robert Higgs, a fellow at the Independent Institute and author of "Against Leviathan," a libertarian critique of Social Security and other programs. "The idea that the government will be your savior and protector is so ingrained in the populace that it's impossible to stamp out."

Representative John Spratt of South Carolina, the senior Democrat on the budget committee, pointed to a provision in the Medicare bill allowing some managed-care firms to compete with the government program, as an example of their gradualist approach.
"The changes have been done in a kind of disaggregated way," Mr. Spratt said. "People will only see the trend looking backward some years from now. The trend is towards less government, fewer benefit programs and significant changes in those that exist."

I certainly hope he is correct.

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state."
No.
Foreign Aid is the soft underbelly of the welfare state.
Immigration is the soft underbelly of the welfare state.
Pork is the soft underbelly of the welfare state.
Social Security? I'm paying for mine. In full.
Please no more propoganda.
You're not even as clever as your mentor Joseph Geobbels.

But Americans also tend to be suspicious of radical reform, as Newt Gingrich discovered after he became speaker of the House of Representatives and tried to enact his Contract With America.

Excuse me... I recall the the CWA provisions all had poll-tested majority approval greater than 60%. The only people "suspicious" of "radical reform" were the Democrats who tried to oppose their implementation at every turn.

Sadly, this is true for too many of us. This is how Robert KKK Byrd, Ted Kennedy, etc, etc, keep getting reelected. They bring home the bacon. If only people would understand that the bacon was paid for by their own tax dollars the government robbed from them in the first place.

"The idea that the government will be your savior and protector is so ingrained in the populace that it's impossible to stamp out."

It would take a major education program to stamp it out, in the proportions that we see for propagating the anti-smoking meme, but it's not clear who would be prepared to foot the bill for such a program.

Peoples' enlightened self-interest could and should be tapped for this monumental educational effort. For example, by pointing out how hard you work for your income that is taken away from you to fund SS, and how little you get in return, compared to what you would have had if you could have saved that amount for your own retirement or other use. Also, how it prevents you from saving the money that you have earned and passing it directly to your children in the event of your early death. And, how the massive expansion of government social programs (and other economic manipulation by the government) has made it so that families that used to be able to make ends meet with one breadwinner now need two or more (yes, it's more complicated than how I have simplified it here, but there's more than enough truth to it).

Of course, any such effort would be met head-on by the forces of collectivist greed (AARP, private foundations, Communist and Democrat parties, government employee unions, the public schools, etc.). However, they have been spewing their screw-the-productive-members-of-society rhetoric for generations, facing little in the way of effective countermeasures from supporters of Liberty. It would be nice to at least compete with them vigorously in the arena of ideas.

Let me see--FDR changed the US Supreme Court -and seated a
majority of godless leftists- to the ruin of the nation.
Now GWB has a Congressional contol of both Houses but it seems to me there be more Rino Republicrats in Congress than leaders with juevos to appoint and confirm strict
construcitonalists to the Court willing to restore what has been taken from us. Without Congressional help GWB is
just a puppet without power.Rathe rlike the Queen of England.

The author, John Tierney, strikes me as a libertarian and not too fond of the nanny state. Using terms like the Slimes doesn't help our cause when we complain that the left only engages in ad hominem attacks, that they can't debate the merits of an argument, that they just call us right wing extremists or extreme conservatives of some sort.

Denouncing libertarians as drug crazed hedonists doesn't help the argument either. I think it's more realistic to recognize them as folks who acknowledge that government is unable to change human nature by penalizing conduct for which people are unlikely to be caught or suffer severe penalties. I think it might be better to consider libertarians as realistic conservatives. They almost always favor fiscal conservatism and the Second Amendment. The ills that social conservatives rightly decry seem bound to the human condition.

IMHO, I think we should stop calling percieved political enemies perjorative names, especially those unequivocally on the left. Call them names that they were proud to be called, at least at some time in the past, i.e. the left, liberals, democrats, socialists, marxists, reds, whatever. When they describe folks on the right as some sort of extremist, the retort should be in Ronald Reagan's words, "there you go again".

When proponents of the nanny, welfare, police state make proposals for more government, why not call them "There you go again" Kennedy, "There you go again" Schumer, "There you go again" whatever lefty's surname?

Social Security? I'm paying for mine. In full.

No, you are not. You are paying for someone else's Social Security.

When you retire, someone will have to pay for yours. Or not pay, and then you won't get your full promised benefits.

And don't even think about filing suit if the government renegs on Social Security. SCOTUS has already ruled that you have no legal right or claim to Social Security.

"Call them names that they were proud to be called, at least at some time in the past, i.e. the left, liberals, democrats, socialists, marxists, reds, whatever"
I don't think liberals should be included in that list. Liberal comes from the Latin word for "Freedom". By that definition I am a Liberal. It is unfair to give the left such a generous and inaccurate label. They are socialists, leftists, but please stop calling them liberals.

It is unfair to give the left such a generous and inaccurate label. They are socialists, leftists, but please stop calling them liberals.

Because those on the right have the tendency for inaction and preference for limited government, the left have defined the terms of the debate. Now that the right wing reactionaries finally exposed the follies of government programs by good intentions, the members of the left refuse to describe themselves as liberals anymore. They can't get away from the word quickly enough. Progressive is the tag that they use almost without exception. The dems in Congress who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America now call themselves the Progressive Caucus. Google democratic+socialists+of+america and you quickly find Democratic Socialists of America's Progressive Caucus of the US .... The lists of names seems to include the same names even though the order is different.

The term "libertarian" is just a silly name that had to be created because of the fact that "liberal" is too often used to describe socialists. Libertarians are actually the real Liberals.

I agree, but if you ask Joe Blow on the street, who doesn't happen to be a political junkie, what a libertarian is, he'll probably look at you like you have two heads, or worse, and describe some licentious hedonist.

There's no time to prepare for this war. We are already engaged. The best you can hope for is CPE, continuous political education as a strategy. As a tactic, describing them as once proud to call themselves liberal, but now shunning the word, has more than a little value since it is easily documented, at least in New York which had a Liberal Party that routinely endorsed dems. In this country, by saying someone is a socialist has a much greater economic connotation. In the culture war in this country, the terms liberal and conservative have well established meanings.

One has to remember, The New Deal was created in response to a historic economic emergency. Social Security was passed overwhelmingly, with huge majorities in both parties supporting the program.

It's important to remember, weaning off benefits will only succeed if it's done gradually. Also, Republicans need to take on some of the corporate and business entitlements, tax as well as subsidy.

The way to cut the welfare state is to first establish that states - contrary to an idiotic SCOTUS ruling - are not required to provide the same social benefits for out-of-staters as for their own citizens. If SCOTUS refuses to back down on this, cut off their jurisdiction.

Then, politically it will be a lot easier to transfer responsibility for these programs back to the states where they belong. And states will have a strong incentive to keep them efficient, because businesses will only invest in states that have lean, efficient programs.

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