Magic Asterisk

The recent debates over the future of Social Security makes one wonders if George Bush has finally found Ronald Reagan's magic asterisk.

As David E. Rosenbaum of the New York Times pointed out "The budgets prepared by David A. Stockman, Mr. Reagan's first budget director, adopted what was called a "rosy scenario" - impossibly optimistic predictions about future growth, inflation and interest rates. They also included what was called the "magic asterisk" - a gimmick that allowed for the budgeting of unspecified, and never intended, spending cuts.

Starting in 1983 the Reagan administation began relaying on excess Social Security fund to limit deficits and slow calls for higher taxes. One wonders if in 1986 there had not been the Social Security fund to raid it the tax code revisions would have been different.

Instead Republicans relied on excess Social Security taxes to keep the deficit down and to champion irresponsible tax cuts in the new century. While the excess funds helped keep the deficit down, one would have thought that eventually there would come a day when they would have to be paid.

Apparently not. Conservatives are now preaching that there is no trust fund, just paper receipts. But if there is no trust fund, then nothing has to be paid back. In a Feb. 11 column, Dan Froomkin pointed out that Bush is now saying "Social Security's $1.8 trillion trust fund doesn't really exist."

But his best point was "Let's assume that the president really believes that the Social Security trust fund doesn't exist. And let's just forget about the past two decades, during which workers overpaid more than a trillion dollars in payroll taxes. We'll write that off to an unfortunate misunderstanding.

But now take this one more step. Shouldn't Bush therefore call for an immediate cut in payroll taxes, effective immediately?

If Social Security is really pay-as-you-go, and any excess payroll tax revenue just goes into the general fund, why are American workers paying more than it costs to run the program? Why should they overpay Social Security payroll taxes for one more minute -- if in fact it doesn't do the Social Security system any good at all?"

Maybe because Bush has found Reagan's magic asterisk?