I’m going to preface my first column back from winter break with an update on what has been bothering me of late.

My grandmother passed away just a bit after New Year’s. She was a strong, proud and educated woman who came to this country from the ruins of Europe after WWII and raised a family alongside my grandfather in a foreign land. She never doubted her children would prosper and took pains to make sure my mother and her two sisters took advantage of every public service our country had to offer.

When she passed, it was years after my grandfather. He had been a psychiatrist, but one who worked in state hospitals, never in lucrative private practice. His pension was acceptable, but like many Americans, my grandmother’s final days were supplemented by Social Security.

Today, ask any elderly person if they are receiving Social Security, and you will hear a yes from two out of three of them. Social Security pays today an average of $1,184 a month, or roughly $14,000 a year, and for 7 million elderly Americans, Social Security is all they have. In 2000, the Social Security Administration released a report that found that without Social Security, 48 percent of elderly Americans would live below the poverty line. For so many, Social Security is literally the safety net keeping our elderly independent and solvent.

Social Security is loved by the majority of Americans who have made it the untouchable ‘third rail’ of American politics for 45 years.

That is, until President Bush came along. His call to create private accounts held by workers is more a product of his political theme of an “ownership society” than sound economics.

Social Security has been under fire for many years by Libertarians and Republicans alike for two reasons.

First, they believe that the payroll tax your employer (and you) pay into the system is an unjust taxation. Especially on the rich who don’t receive as much from Social Security (or need it) but still pay just like everyone else. They contend that money would go to you if it didn’t go to the government (an unproven, and highly unlikely situation) and that is, to them, an unjust interference with the market.

Second, Karl Rove and Co. want Social Security to die for the simple reason that it works so well. It really annoys them that Social Security is actually as solvent as it is … and that is why the calls for the privatization (or dismemberment) of Social Security are premature and falling on deaf ears.

The majority of Americans do not support changing Social Security when told the cost. That cost, nearly $3 trillion dollars, will have to materialize from thin air (perhaps from the same thin air into which Iraq’s WMDs disappeared) or a tax hike or a reduction in Bush’s tax cuts.

Since none of that seems likely, Bush is, again, pushing an unfunded mandate as an emergency for short-term political gain, all while never looking to the future that we, and not his own trust-fund-endowed progeny, will have to live in.

The further intricacies of Social Security are beyond the scope of this article. Keep a few things clear though when this topic comes up. Social Security will pay out nearly all of its obligations until we retire. To fix Social Security for nearly the next two centuries, one of two things could happen. You can raise the payroll tax by 1.89 percent (less than a percent to you and your employer) or we could take one-sixth of Bush’s tax cut and put it in the Social Security Trust Fund right now. Also, private accounts will not make as much of a return as Social Security does, and that’s from the Social Security Administration itself (4 percent back on your private account vs. 6 percent from the fund).

Making Social Security optional would also destroy it.

First, it’s class warfare of the highest order, since any American making more than $90,000 (the current cap at contributions) would simply leave. This would gut Social Security and, more importantly, ruin its special purpose as a social contract. Social Security pays the benefits earned yesterday by the workers earning today. If we switch to an optional system, current retirees will be burned badly, unless their benefits are guaranteed, something nearly impossible given our current fiscal situation.

Second, the best feature of Social Security is the character it gives our nation. If as Americans we truly believe we can show the world that our liberty is not simply a ticket to the horse race for financial Nirvana but an effort to build a country that recognizes that no one in the richest nation on earth should die a pauper, then Social Security is one of the pillars of American society that should remain intact.

Suffice it to say that gutting Social Security in favor of an untested, unlikely to succeed, and unnecessary innovation is just like our current administration.

Always going off half-cocked.

Rob Deters ([email protected]) is a third-year law student.