Rep. Bill "Dead Horse" Thomas, the California Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, appeared on "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert this morning to discuss Social Security.
There were a couple of good things about the appearance that are worth noting. First, Thomas joined the growing list of conservatives (including Chuck Hagel, Newt Gingrich and George Will) who admit that there is no "crisis" in Social Security, which has a 75-year shortfall that is far smaller than the cost of either making Bush's tax cuts permanent or the Medicare prescription drug bill:
MR. RUSSERT: President Bush has said Social Security is in a crisis. Democrats say hold on, not so fast, it's not a crisis. Is it?
REP. THOMAS: Well, couple of weeks ago, the president had one of his forums in Washington, and if you'll look at what he said actually at that Washington forum, he used the term "problem" 27 times. He used crisis zero. I think problem really is what we're dealing with.
(Of course, Bush said that the Social Security "crisis is here" during his Dec. 20 press conference - see WashingtonPost.com's Dan Froomkin January 12 column for more on the recent switch toward the "problem" terminology. Let's hope Thomas can help solidify the shift to more appropriate language.)
The second good thing about the interview was that Thomas' rambling, often incoherent answers at least made clear to viewers how complicated the Social Security debate is. He didn't have the guts to stand behind all of his statements, but Thomas identified a number of the complicated tradeoffs that policymakers face, and suggested that politically painful steps like increasing revenue or decreasing benefits need to be part of the discussion. That's progress.
All that said, this question from Tim Russert was really annoying:
MR. RUSSERT: Right now we have a cost-of-living increase, a COLA increase, that is tied more to wages than actual inflation. It is inaccurate by everyone's estimation. Should that be adjusted in order to be accurate and specifically related to inflation?
The way benefits are calculated using wages rather than prices is not simply a matter of "accuracy." This is Russert buying into the Washington establishment's obsession with curtailing entitlements. There are real value choices at stake in the debate over how to calculate benefits. Wage indexing costs more over time (since wages generally grow faster than prices), but it expresses the belief that seniors should benefit from the improved standard of living enjoyed by the rest of society. As Matt Yglesias wrote in The American Prospect Online:
Social Security benefits grow in real terms over time so that senior citizens have the opportunity to share in the increased prosperity that was made possible by their hard work in earlier years. Today, thanks to wage-indexing, the living members of the much-heralded Greatest Generation enjoy a standard of living befitting the early 21st century. If we'd implemented a price index from the beginning, they'd currently be stuck at the much lower standard of living enjoyed in their youth -- a time when many Americans lacked telephones and electricity.
There's a real policy question at stake here. To describe it as simply a matter of accuracy is ridiculous.
Update 2/3: Josh Marshall correctly pointed out that Russert is also conflating two issues - how initial benefits are calculated, and how they're adjusted for changes in the cost of living.
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