The Washington Post had a short note in its January 12th edition stating that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) wants to appoint a bipartisan panel of lawmakers to study ways to deal with the skyrocketing costs of Social Security and other entitlement programs. At the same time, he refused to disclose many details about the panel, saying that too much disclosure could “kill this baby in the crib.”

     So the new Democratic majority in the Senate is only a few days old, and already they want to start a secret program to tinker with the most important social safety net in the country. This is so wrong on so many different levels.

     First, there is no justification for this panel to be secret. There are not any national security secrets which are likely to be discussed by a panel on Social Security. If you read between the lines, Conrad is probably concerned that the American people might not like the proposed changes to Social Security, and he therefore wants to keep the details hidden for as long as possible. That is not an acceptable way to conduct business in a democracy. The people’s business should be conducted in public.

     Second, we just had a major effort to “reform” Social Security during the last two years, and that effort failed miserably, which is exactly what it deserved. There has not been any popular demand for a new effort along these lines. We don’t yet know who is providing the impetus for this new effort, but I suspect that it comes from the same big money interests that were behind the last reform effort.

     Third, and perhaps most importantly, Social Security ain’t broke. The Washington Post has been conducting a major campaign, in both its editorial pages and news reporting, to promote the claim that Social Security is broken. It often does this by lumping Social Security together with “other entitlement programs” and then reporting that these programs are facing skyrocketing costs. It is a bit of legerdemain that is used to fool the uninformed.

     Here is how it works. Social Security is not facing skyrocketing costs, but some other entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare are. By lumping them together, the Washington Post and other critics of Social Security can claim that they collectively face skyrocketing costs. It is no more valid than saying that the costs of computers and gasoline have skyrocketed over the last five years, and that we therefore need to do something about the soaring costs of computers.

     The fact is that Social Security will continue to have large surpluses for many years to come, and that one or two small adjustments like eliminating the ceiling on Social Security contributions for high-income earners will keep it solvent for as long as we can forecast. It is far more solvent than most government programs, which rely on yearly appropriations from Congress to keep themselves afloat. Congress actually borrows large amounts of money from the Social Security program. It certainly isn’t broken.

     The prior major pushes for Social Security “reform” have come from bankers, brokers and other monied interests who want to profit from the privatization of your Social Security benefits. There is no way that your benefits are going to be bigger after those greed heads finish taking “their” cut of your benefits.

     The push for Social Security reform is terrible public policy, but the advocates have given enough money to enough politicians that it is an ongoing threat to all of us. Don’t think that the threat has gone away just because the Democrats are in the majority in Congress.

     We need to keep reminding them that we expect open government, and that they shouldn’t be trying to fix what ain’t broke.

     My thanks to Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research for informing me about this story. He writes a regular blog critiquing mainstream media economic reporting, which can be found at www.prospect.org/deanbaker.

---