The American Spectator

CONCORD SUPPORTS MANY of the reforms the President has on the table — raising the retirement age, indexing benefits to prices instead of wages, eliminating early retirement. Being Democrats, they aren’t averse to raising payroll taxes, either.

What distinguishes the Coalition is its willingness to place old-age benefits reform in a larger perspective. “Social Security is the easy one,” says Bixby. “Medicare is going to be much more difficult. Medicare Part A is already running a cash deficit and Part B was always funded by tax revenues anyway. Social Security is Mars while Medicare is Jupiter. They may look the same from a distance, but when we finally reach the Medicare crisis in 2020, it will be unfathomably bigger.”

Everyone at Concord attributes the current Democratic obstructionism to an emotional attachment to the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Social Security and Medicare represent liberalism’s two greatest triumphs,” says Kerrey. “Democrats are having a terrible time admitting that all the countries problems haven’t already been solved. But it’s wrong to argue Bush’s proposals threaten the system. You have to think in terms of 2035, not 1935.”

The mainstream media constantly celebrate the maverick stances of the Senate’s three “moderate Republicans” — John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins, of Maine and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Yet no one ever asks what happened to the moderate Democrats? The answer is, they are now in exile, completely read out of a party that has Howard Dean as its national chairman and “Hell No, We Won’t Go” as its solution to Social Security.