"The Social Security trust fund is in pretty good shape today and we should not embark upon risky, dangerous schemes which will, in fact, undermine Social Security, such as privatization"
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Calling Social Security “in pretty good shape” is less a calm actuarial assessment than a preemptive strike against a very specific Washington impulse: fix what isn’t broken because there’s ideological glory in remodeling it. Max Baucus, a centrist Democrat and longtime Senate Finance figure, isn’t offering romance about the New Deal; he’s drawing a bright line around a program that works precisely because it is boring, pooled, and politically durable.
The phrase “risky, dangerous schemes” does double duty. On the surface, it’s a consumer-warning label for privatization proposals that would divert payroll taxes into individual investment accounts. Underneath, it frames privatization as a kind of moral hazard: shifting collective insurance into a market bet, then asking retirees to absorb volatility that the system was designed to smooth out. “Schemes” is tellingly dismissive, implying not serious reform but a sales pitch - something cooked up by ideologues and financiers, not by people tasked with paying Grandma on time.
Context matters: “trust fund” language is aimed at reassuring anxious voters while narrowing the policy battlefield. Baucus concedes just enough institutional legitimacy to the fund to blunt panic, then pivots to a political argument about irreversibility. Once you siphon cash out of the system, you create transition costs and a constituency invested in dismantling the old model, “undermining” Social Security even if the rhetoric says “save” it.
It works because it turns technocratic plumbing into a story about risk allocation and betrayal: who carries uncertainty, and who gets to call it reform.
The phrase “risky, dangerous schemes” does double duty. On the surface, it’s a consumer-warning label for privatization proposals that would divert payroll taxes into individual investment accounts. Underneath, it frames privatization as a kind of moral hazard: shifting collective insurance into a market bet, then asking retirees to absorb volatility that the system was designed to smooth out. “Schemes” is tellingly dismissive, implying not serious reform but a sales pitch - something cooked up by ideologues and financiers, not by people tasked with paying Grandma on time.
Context matters: “trust fund” language is aimed at reassuring anxious voters while narrowing the policy battlefield. Baucus concedes just enough institutional legitimacy to the fund to blunt panic, then pivots to a political argument about irreversibility. Once you siphon cash out of the system, you create transition costs and a constituency invested in dismantling the old model, “undermining” Social Security even if the rhetoric says “save” it.
It works because it turns technocratic plumbing into a story about risk allocation and betrayal: who carries uncertainty, and who gets to call it reform.
Quote Details
| Topic | Retirement |
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