It’s Tuesday, and that must mean it’s time for some “he said/she said” journalism from the Associated Press. President Bush took his Social Security road show to a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi, and the AP was on hand to dispatch his message, nearly unabridged, to its subscribers.
We hear from the president first as Tom Raum writes, “In his auto-plant speech, the president called the new indexing proposal an attempt ‘to help people come up with the solution’ to Social Security’s solvency problems. He said it would help the neediest retirees … His indexing plan ‘solves most of the long term problem,’ he added.”
Next up is the obligatory “he said/she said” passage. Raum puts it this way: “Proponents of the indexing plan say it would erase about 70 percent of Social Security’s long-term deficit. Critics argue that the slower growth in benefits would fall hardest on middle-income Americans.”
First of all, those are two different arguments. The argument the “critics” are making doesn’t address the argument of the “proponents,” and vice versa.
Let’s deal with Raum’s “proponents” first. As CJR Daily reported yesterday, the Bush plan is based on a proposal named for Robert Pozen, an investment executive and a Democratic member of Bush’s 2001 Social Security Commission, that would erase about 70 percent of Social Security’s estimated long-term deficit. But Bush’s variation of the Pozen plan would erase little more than half of that expected deficit. That’s because Pozen’s formula would cut benefits for the disabled, whereas Bush’s version would not.
The argument of the “critics” is a bit harder to judge. What is fact, though, as the New York Times reported this past weekend, is that implementing the Pozen plan would cut retirement benefits to the middle class from the level promised under current law by as much as 28 percent by the year 2072, while benefits to the wealthiest retirees would be trimmed by 42 to 49 percent. One could argue that a 28 percent reduction in benefits to ordinary Americans would fall harder upon them than a 42 percent cut in benefits to the rich who are, after all, well, rich.
At the tail-end of its story, the AP reports accurately that “[t]he White House has not said what income levels would trigger which benefit increases” — which is why the Times based its analysis on Pozen’s numbers. At the same time, should the White House choose to expand the definition of the “poor” — those who would see no benefit cut at all — then inevitably its plan would chip away even less at the future deficit.
We’re not asking for the AP to get into all that in every article it does on Social Security. But once you reference the speculations of both “proponents” and “critics,” then your readers deserve to know if either side’s argument holds any water.
–Thomas Lang
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.