Thirty or thirty-five years from now, when retired baby boomers in huge numbers have depleted what is left of the Society Security Fund, their children and grandchildren will be asking: "Why didn't you act while there was still time? Why didn't your generation protect those whom you say you hold dearest?"
Yet to listen to two of the nation's most prominent baby boomers -- Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich -- all discussion about the long-range financial problems of Social Security, Medicare and other federal entitlement programs is "off the table." There is no "crisis" in the five-year budget cycle that seems to be the limit of Washington's fiscal vision. So they leave the 30-year problems to the politicians coming after them.
To the consternation of the myriad interest groups ensconced by the banks of the Potomac, however, Sens. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., and John Danforth, R-Mo., have dared to mention the unmentionable. As co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, they have proposed reforms of the Social Security system so shocking that their own commission is likely to reject them tomorrow. Already, organized labor, the National Association of Retired People and the NAACP have denounced their proposals.
One does not have to accept all or any of the specifics offered -- a gradual increase in the retirement age to 70, cuts in benefits on a means-test basis, transfer of 1.5 percent in payroll taxes to mandatory private savings accounts, tax increases for top-income groups, more co-pay in Medicare -- to enlist in the Kerrey-Danforth crusade. It is enough to demand a stop to hypocritical talk about balanced budgets and deficit reduction from those who refuse to do anything decisive about the one section of the budget that is out of control.
Senator Danforth, now on the verge of retirement, warns that in just 18 years federal entitlements and interest on the national debt will consume all the revenues the government receives, leaving zero funds even for the Pentagon and federal prisons. And by 2029, he says, even the Social Security program itself will be swallowed up unless changes are made in time. Senator Kerrey, who may be damaging his presidential ambitions, laments that once people start looking at "the ugly things that need to be done, manana looks more attractive." Yet the longer we wait, he cautions, the more painful will be the remedies.
As the number of working-age Americans diminishes and the number of old folks increases as percentages of the population, citizens will have every right to ask decades from now what happened to political courage during the 1990s.