Policy Perspective

Social Security and Crisis Rhetoric

by Fay Lomax Cook and Jeff Manza

Fall 2005, Volume 27, Number 1

On May 1, President Bush finished a 60-day nationwide tour to promote his idea of reforming Social Security and establishing “personal retirement accounts.” The tour followed on the heels of his Feb. 2 State of the Union where he told his fellow Americans that the 70-year-old system would be “exhausted and bankrupt” by 2042.

In his address, he warned that unless steps were taken, there would be “drastically higher taxes, massive new borrowing, or sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits or other government programs.”

By the end of his tour, Bush was taking pains to reassure those 55 and older that their Social Security benefits would not be affected by the changes, while engaging in a little bit of soft-shoe backpedaling on the extent of the proposed privatization.

It is obvious that vociferous opposition to the reforms and falling public support had their effect on toning down White House talk of a program in crisis. Perhaps less evident is how the political use of crisis rhetoric is deeply problematic.

The language of crisis rhetoric is used almost daily to grab our attention. Policy entrepreneurs fan the flames of crisis—failing public schools, terrorists in our subways and shopping malls, burgeoning government budget deficits, foreign takeovers of homegrown companies, skyrocketing medical costs, the breakdown of traditional family values, and on and on.

Cynics point out this is par for the course in policy debates. Indeed, surly exchanges on late-night news have become a staple of every American’s media diet.

Our politicians have become experts at using crisis-mode language to frame debate over Social Security’s long-term problems and call for reforms—even when the outlook is exceedingly good and Social Security benefits can continue to be paid in full until 2042 when 73 percent of benefits can be paid.

Consider that in 1983 Congress passed an amendment that included raising payroll taxes and gradually increasing the age of eligibility for full benefits to keep Social Security solvent. The adjustments worked so well that analysts calculated they would generate a half-a-trillion-dollar surplus by 2015. For those sounding the alarm, however, the surplus resulted from an overly restrained fiscal policy that would eventually sink the country into recession.

This, of course, turned out not to be the case.

Forecasting is always risky business—especially in the case of Social Security where projections almost always understate long-term economic growth and exaggerate the system’s vulnerability.

So why do politicians and pundits continue to wave the crisis flag—not just for Social Security but a multitude of other equally complex and long-term structural problems in the United States?

To some extent, they do it because it does work. Psychologists know that panic negatively affects cognitive processing and decision-making. And so it is with the crisis rhetoric. We debate the terms of policy proposals differently and can more easily be persuaded that something must be done, whether we really need to or not.

The problem is that such distorted debate can lead to actions that are more often regrettable than not. Witness how the war on drugs, launched by President Reagan, led to policies that have America’s prisons overflowing at vast taxpayer and social expense. Yet 20 years later drug use remains virtually unchanged.

With regard to Social Security, the danger of crisis rhetoric is that it causes the public to lose faith in programs based on long-term expectations. From one generation to the next, we expect adjustments to be made in a fair and prudent manner. By chipping away at the public’s psychological sense of security and faith in these programs, exaggerated and misleading claims needlessly create a climate of “social insecurity.”

While a moratorium on the use of “crisis” in political rhetoric would be welcome, its use may simply be too tempting for enterprising reformers (of whatever ideological stripe) to give it up. But if citizens at least recognize such claims for what they are—manipulative rather than analytical—more informed, sober public debates might follow.

Fay Lomax Cook is professor of human development and social policy and director of the Institute for Policy Research. Jeff Manza is professor of sociology and was IPR’s acting director in 2004-05.

This editorial was based on ones they originally wrote for the Chicago Tribune on May 10, 1988 and February 20, 2005.