Creating Social Security 'crisis'

To the editor:

In promoting his agenda for personal accounts, President Bush has been speaking about an unfunded liability under Social Security described variously as $10 trillion, $11 trillion and $10.4 trillion. The 75-year unfunded liability of $3.7 trillion is usually used by policymakers. But this $10 trillion to $11 trillion number, representing some version of the liability over an infinite time horizon, sounds a lot scarier.

Bush says that "$10.4 trillion is nearly twice the combined wages of every single working American in 2004." So consider this: The infinite-horizon unfunded liability under Medicare is about $61 trillion, with $16 trillion coming just from Bush's new prescription drug benefit. Yet he's not declaring a crisis in Medicare.

Personal accounts would greatly benefit the financial-services industry, major Bush supporters. And they would be a major step in a long-standing goal of many conservatives toward ending the social safety net while causing budget problems that would force cuts in other government programs. This may explain Bush's interest in this "crisis."

Bush's new drug benefit, which will benefit the pharmaceutical, insurance and HMO industries much more than the elderly and disabled, creates a far bigger problem than the entire shortfall in Social Security. Given that Bush just created this hugely inefficient new drug benefit, why would anyone take seriously his ability to effectively address Social Security's problems, let alone his cries of crisis?

DAVID J. ROBERTS, Associate Professor of Accountancy, DePaul University, Chicago