Social Security

Let the pandering to young voters begin:

Only problem is, young voters don't consider this a voting issue and won't buy it in the face of an alternative argument from the Obama camp. But by all means, Sen. McCain, please keep trashing the social safety net.

It's common knowledge that Social Security is "the third rail" of politics, but this year it is doubly true for youth organizations. We're in the middle of what may be the most important election in our lifetime and Democrats stand a damn good chance of not only winning the Presidency, but of capturing sizable majorities in both chambers of congress that could virtually guarantee a progressive policy reformation not seen since the New Deal or the Great Society.

In election after election, young voters are choosing Democratic candidates over Republicans by large margins. On issue after issue, young voters hold progressive stands on how to solve the problems that affect our nation. Except on the issue of Social Security.

A recent report by the Center for American Progress and Demos found that 74% of Millennials are supportive of plans to privatize social security compared to 41% of adults over 60. That's the bad news. The good news is that this is less about their ideology than their particular stage of life. It's common for younger voters to feel less secure about social security (and their prospects for receiving it when they retire), and thus be open to more ideas as to how best we can "fix" the perceived problem.

Here's some more good news: according to that same report, compared with previous generations, Millennials are more open to the government spending money to stabilize social security. It's not that Millennials aren't progressive on Social Security - at this point they aren't anything except looking for an answer, and not even very hard at that. According to a February Rock the Vote poll (pdf), only 4% of Millennials rank Social Security as the most important issue that will determine how they cast their ballot.

Nevertheless, it is the one sole chink in the armor that conservatives can exploit if they want to make inroads among youth. John McCain is already out on the stump exploiting this, speaking out of both sides of his mouth on the issue of privatizing Social Security. You can bet that there will be even more attempts by Republicans to scare young voters about the program's long-term fiscal stability as we get closer to the election.

That's why it's really disheartening to see youth organizations like Mobilize.org, Rock the Vote, and the Roosevelt Institution engaging conservatives on the issue and providing ideological cover to conservative groups who want to privatize the social safety net that has served us so well for so long.

On Monday, June 16th, these and other youth organizers, along with a number of conservative and "nonpartisan" policy types, will convene in Washington for the Youth Entitlement Summit. The name alone - entitlement - should ring alarm bells as a conservative frame, as should the leading sponsor organization, Americans for Generational Equality (AGE) - a conservative outfit that has promotes "intergenerational strife" and argues for the privatization of social security. Founded in 1986, it closed up shop in 1990 only to reopen it's doors - and PR machine - in 2006.

The conference claims "non partisanship," and a spirited discussion of the issues, but if that is really true, why are there no progressive economic luminaries like Jared Bernstein addressing the attendees? Why is the Center for American Progress and the Economic Policy Institute nowhere to be seen in the list of partners? Instead, the agenda boasts scholars from the Brookings, Heritage and Hoover foundations and the panels all take on the frame of "X program in crisis." Hardly a fair and balanced representation of the issues.

We're on the verge of the first progressive majority in decades. Social Security's problems - to the extent that it has any - are minor at best and decades in the future. There is no rush to fix this "problem," and if we can all wait another 6 months, the solution we find is likely to be much better or all Americans. Collaborating with conservative idealogues, even sitting at the table with them at this point is pointless at best and damaging at worst -- to the coming electoral wave and Democratic support among young voters, and to setting the agenda when we have a Democratic government in 2009.

Youth organizers beware! Stay off the third rail of politics and don't play the conservative's game. We have nothing to gain by engaging them on this issue until AFTER the November election.

Yesterday in USA Today, Republican operative David Frum published an Op-Ed acknowledging the Republican Party's huge loss of support from young voters, and outlining a four-point plan to recapture the youth vote and revive the days of Reagan and Bush Sr.

Frum gets a few things right. Millennials are the most anti-Republican age group in the electorate, that position is a response to the failures of the Bush Administration to adequately address any number of social, economic, and geopolitical problems, the dominance of Christian conservatives and their culture war values on choice and GLBT rights also plays a part, as does the fact that the Millennial generation is the most diverse, tolerant generation in history and the Republican Party is not at all diverse or tolerant.

But Frum is smoking something if he thinks his four-point plan can turn things around for the GOP.

Three of his proposals amount to nothing more than putting a kinder, gentler face on policies that a majority of youth roundly reject. I see little room for a pro-environment, pro-choice, multilateralist generation that believes in the power and obligation of government to protect and provide opportunity for its citizens to embrace a unilateral foreign policy, green washing environmental policy or a more compassionate anti-choice agenda.

But one recommendation sticks out among the rest and it deserves closer scrutiny.

Think Social Security taxes, not income taxes.

Today's young voters are paying much more in Social Security taxes than in income taxes — and contributing much more into Social Security than they will ever see out of it.

Republicans took a beating on the Social Security issue in 2005. But the issue is not going away. And Barack Obama's solution — taxing more income for Social Security — is neither workable nor popular. Personal accounts offer hope for personal wealth to a generation that is increasingly anxious about its economic future. With a relatively small subsidy — $300 per year for workers earning less than $40,000 — a revived Republican personal account plan could guarantee that every American worker would retire a millionaire, even if they never earn more in their lives than minimum wage.

Republicans will always face overwhelming disadvantages among blacks and Hispanics. President Bush's attempts to woo Hispanics via lax immigration policies disastrously backfired, alienating white Republicans without achieving gains among Hispanics.

But we can talk to young blacks and Hispanics as young people, who share economic interests with an entire generation of overtaxed young workers, regardless of race.

This is a common narrative heard not just among conservatives, who use it as their supposed "Ace in the hole" when talking to or about young voters, but also among progressives. During my book tour this question has come up a number of times. Yesterday at the Roosevelt Institution conference, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute, made reference to an alleged conservative view of Social Security reform among Millennials. I myself have fallen into the trap of believing that young people consider Social Security broken and privatization as the most viable option for "fixing" it.

After extensive conversations with some fellow youth leaders this morning, and a little bit of reading, I no longer believe that to be the case.

Back in 2005, the last time that this issue came up, Rock the Vote teamed up with the AARP to poll the electorate on the issue. Contrary to popular belief, they found that most young people did not support Social Security privatization if it entailed the dismantling of other parts of the social safety net:

Most Americans in the 18 to 39 age group, for example, say that they would flat-out oppose the accounts if, for example, it means that cuts to their guaranteed Social Security benefits would be so severe that they could not make up the difference with private accounts (70 percent say they would oppose) or that diverting some Social Security payroll taxes means "massive new federal debt in order to pay current benefits" (63 percent say they would oppose).

PEW found similar results at the time, and also noted that the more young people knew about the details of privatization, the less likely they were to support it.

A number of young activists wrote about the subject at the time. Dana Goldstein, then of Campus Progress, actually debated a pro-privatization student and found that the pro-privatization student group, Students for Saving Social Security, was little more than an astroturf group.

At the time, Matt Singer, now of Forward Montana, and Heather McGhee, who is now working on Demos's Better Deal Conference, also wrote critiques of the supposed youth support for social security privatization.

Lest you think that my outdated statistics from 2005 are no longer relevant, let's remember that in 2005, a number of Gen Xers were still in the 18 - 29 catagory (and they made up a majority of the 18 - 36 cohort). Gen Xers have consistently been far more conservative than Millennials. If anything, these numbers have likely seen a vast improvement. Again, Rock the Vote's poll data can provide some help here.

In February of 2008, Rock the Vote released a new poll of young voters (18 - 29) (pdf). When asked what their top concerns were for the country, only 2% responsed that Social Security was one of their largest concerns. 0% of African Americans agreed that Social Security was a major problem, and only 5% of Hispanics. Now granted, there are margin of error issues in these numbers, but the point is, the numbers are so small that it is hard to see how this could turn out to be the Republican's "Ace in the Hole" to win back young voters.

At best, what we have in Social Security is the one issue in which we may actually have to engage the Republicans in serious debate among young voters. But research shows that once young voters become educated as to the details, and the consequences, of privatization, they readily abandon the concept. Considering the conditions of the stock market recently, this is a debate I'm more than willing to have.