Social Security

There's a cola war going on, but it has nothing to do with Coke versus Pepsi. It began earlier this month when the Congressional Budget Office projected that for the first time in three decades, there would be no cost-of-living adjustment -- or COLA -- for Social Security recipients in 2010, 2011 and 2012. These adjustments are designed to keep elderly Social Security recipients from losing purchasing power as prices rise, so it's not surprising that the initial reaction was one of concern.

Opponents have unleashed a torrent of hyperbolic claims and heated invective in an effort to stop President Obama's healthcare reform. But the president shouldn't be surprised by the rhetoric. Three-quarters of a century ago, nearly identical denunciations were used in an attempt to kill legislation that created one of the country's most popular government programs: Social Security. Though no one was talking about "death panels" back then, opponents claimed that Social Security would result in massive government control.

Robert M. Ball, an indefatigable champion of Social Security who was present practically at its creation in 1935 and rose in the bureaucracy to become its commissioner under three presidents, has died. He was 93. Ball, a resident of suburban Maryland, died Tuesday night after a brief illness, according to the National Academy of Social Insurance. Ball was the founding chairman of the organization.

As the Senate begins debate on who should benefit from a more-than-$150-billion economic stimulus package, Democrats have put two groups at the top of their list: senior citizens living on Social Security and Americans struggling to pay their energy bills. Missing from the list are workers who lost their jobs in the downturn. What accounts for this tally of winners and losers in the scramble for a piece of the stimulus pie?

With the presidential campaign going full tilt, a new government report on a big national problem is usually followed by volleys of rhetoric from the candidates. But on Tuesday, when the annual report on the precarious state of Medicare and Social Security came out, the reaction was not exactly deafening.

Along with baseball and cherry blossoms, spring in the nation's capital brings a ritualized dance over Social Security. Every year for the last two decades, Social Security's trustees have issued a report alerting Congress that action is needed to keep the program solvent. And every year, Congress answers with silence. It was not always this way. In 1973, the trustees projected a deficit. By 1977, Congress had responded with corrective legislation.

Recently, i heard three European journalists express astonishment at the primitive state of America's social safety net. "Do you have private pensions?" they asked. The system is unraveling, I explained. "Healthcare?" Some folks get it, some don't. "Public pensions?" Vastly underfunded. When I mentioned that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are touting innovative ideas for government savings plans, in the form of a national 401(k) -- the journalists harrumphed.

Sometime late last year, an employee of a McLean, Va., investment firm decided to trade some music, or maybe a movie, with like-minded users of the online file-sharing network LimeWire while using a company computer. In doing so, he inadvertently opened the private files of his firm, Wagner Resource Group, to the public. That exposed the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of about 2,000 of the firm's clients, including Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

Richard Broadway, 66, doesn't intend to retire. "When you retire, you die," he said. "I always want to do projects of one nature or another." But the Newport Beach resident and partner in a dental-product business is old enough to receive Social Security benefits. And he's wondering whether he should. The question is echoed by many seniors. If you can start getting monthly Social Security payments at age 62, why would you put it off?

In a final drive to toughen immigration enforcement, the Bush administration will again try to institute a system that would force employers to fire workers who have discrepancies in their Social Security data. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday that he would ask a federal judge to lift an injunction imposed against the "no-match" rule after foes including the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued to stop it last year.