So as we know, the
media blitz is coming and we need a counter-campaign NOT designed by Bob Shrum and the rest of the "professional election losers" of the Democratic establishment. We also know that the congressional Republican caucus is already feeling trepidation on this. Kos writes, and I agree, that we must give no quarter. But I also think that there is vast opportunity here--Social Security reform could be the same political graveyard for the Republicans in Congress that health care reform was for the Democrats in 1993-94.
There are already some good ideas percolating out there. Josh Marshall has the fact-based case at his blog: there's no crisis and the scheme will be a loser for most Americans. But we can't just offer a dispassionate defense of the status quo: we need to blow up the Republicans' arguments by appealing to the gut as well as the brain
Two articles on the
American Prospect website seem to point the way:
Michael Tomasky's piece about the need for a "Harry and Louise"-style campaign to make the case in language that non-wonks can understand and empathize with, and
Paul Starr's case that the vast borrowing necessary to finance privatization will give China even more leverage over the U.S. economy--a situation equivalent to having your chief business rival as your banker!
Here's the choice cut from Tomasky:
I say some smart political consultant should just do exactly what the Republicans did. Do up some ads with another, similarly likeable couple. Heck, just call them Harry and Louise. No -- Louis and Harriet, to make a joke. And Louis and Harriet need to be sitting around worrying not about some crisis, not about the legacy of the New Deal, but only about how this will affect them.
...the future Social Security shortfall can only be filled, no matter what proponents of privatization do or don't say, by future benefit cuts -- which are at the very heart of the proposed change from pegging benefits to wages to pegging them to inflation (wages typically rise faster than inflation).
...
Louis and Harriet are a young married couple, around 32 or so. They're sitting in their kitchen. Harriet bounces a newborn on her lap, while a toddler plays on the floor before her. Louis is contentedly reading the paper, as men since Ward Cleaver have been wont to do. It's a modest kitchen -- Kenmore, not Sub-Zero -- but neat and houseproud.
Louis: "Gee, Harriet, it says here that this Social Security privatization is going to have to result in benefit cuts for future retirees."
Harriet: "Really, Louis? But I though the president said we'd be able to make more."
Louis: "Well, that isn't what it says here. And some of the fellas at work have said, too" [Personal validation is crucial, because we all know we can't trust the media.] "that privatizing won't really fix what's wrong. There'll still be a shortfall, and that will have to be made up through cuts to future retirees."
Harriet: "Like what kind of cuts?"
Louis: "Well, it doesn't say here, but Bill down at the office -- and remember, he's in accounting -- says he figures as much as 40 percent down the road. I figured it out. For me, that might mean going from about $40,000 to about $24,000."
Harriet (pauses as a pensive look crosses her face): "Gosh, Louis. So if that's what's going to happen to people like us, I wonder who's really making out here?" [A subtle class-warfare fillip, playing nicely into everyone's presumption that the Republicans are out to help the rich.]
and here's Starr:
The Congressional Budget Office already projects a federal deficit of $2.3 trillion over the next 10 years. Making the Bush tax cuts permanent, as the president urges, would add another $1.9 trillion. But the total of $4.2 trillion is a low estimate because it allows for no adjustment for population growth and inflation in discretionary programs, not to mention future costs in Iraq or other wars. Borrowing the funds for Social Security privatization would raise deficits by $2 trillion more.
From whom will we borrow the money? These days about three-fifths of the federal deficit is being financed by foreign countries, much of it by their central banks. Currently, Japan is holding $720 billion in U.S. treasuries; China, $174 billion. If the Bush proposal were enacted without tax increases, the federal government would go deeper into debt to foreign countries to enable workers to speculate on the stock market.
...
Before September 11 and the preoccupation with Islamic terrorism, the specter that haunted the minds of some conservative intellectuals was the emergence of China as a global rival. No one in the Bush administration, however, seems to mind that we rely increasingly on China not only for cheap goods at Wal-Mart but also for the money to cover the federal deficit. Irony does not begin to describe the prospect of privatizing Social Security with billions borrowed from what used to be known as "Red China" (a "red state" in an obsolete sense that older readers will recall).
A recent report that China might be trimming back its purchases of Treasury bonds briefly gave the currency markets the jitters, pushing down the dollar. If China were to begin unloading its dollar assets, it could send the dollar into a free fall, forcing up U.S. interest rates and potentially bringing on a deep recession. Given China's dependence on exports to the United States and its hoard of Treasury bonds, no one expects Beijing to bring about a dollar collapse deliberately. But a collapse could occur nonetheless.
I actually think the Democrats can hit this much harder: Starr posits, and I'm sure the Republicans would agree, that the Chinese won't trigger a US economic slump because it would hurt them too. But these are thugs who massacred their own citizens in 1989, who continue to game the global economic system in myriad ways large and small, and who clearly follow Machiavelli more than John Stuart Mill. Why even give them the leverage to do this--much less to facilitate a bad and unpopular policy anyway?
The endgame here is that the Democrats can build a larger case about Republican recklessness: with deficits, with "breaking" programs generally judged to be successful, with Iraq, and maybe with the Constitution. It's a timeless theme about the arrogance of entrenched power--and for a change, it puts us on the right side of both the specific argument about Social Security and the larger narrative about good governance.