SOCIAL SECURITY: JUST MORE TINKERING?

Repairing America's fraying entitlement, Social Security, is said to be on President Clinton's agenda. With three years to go before he leaves office, Clinton is said to be interested in making fundamental reform a lasting legacy of his administration. Against all prior experience with this most devious of leaders, let us hope that it is so.

Experience isn't reassuring on this point. Consider: Congressional Republicans proposed reducing the rate of growth in Medicare only to be savaged by Clinton, his Democratic apparatus and Big Labor, which spent millions of dollars attacking them. Electoral returns in hand, Clinton approved a budget deal this year that contains Medicare reform measures nearly identical to what he opposed in the 18 months leading up to last November. Show us a more cynical stunt.

Now the same president tells us he wants to reform Social Security and is consulting with the folks at the American Association of Retired Persons -- perhaps the most reliable obstacle to needed reform. Good luck.

Meanwhile, those among our leaders who seriously and sincerely seek to do this essential work must be guided by one overriding principle: Their worst enemy could be another round of piecemeal reform measures of the kind we have seen before. Please don't foist on us yet another commission that will propose another round of tax increases to prop up the same creaking system. Bold reforms that includes moving toward free-market approaches are urgently needed. Our neighbors in Chile have shown us the way. Even one of the president's own commissions has urged that a portion of Social Security money be invested in the stock market rather than in low-yielding government bonds, as required by law.

Recent polls have shown that more young Americans believe in UFOs than believe there will be Social Security when they retire. Proving them wrong will be one of the greatest challenges of our time.