Keep it public.

At a recent panel discussion at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center titled, "Social Security Reform and Catholic Social Teaching," Sharon Daly of Catholic Charities USA called Social Security "the most successful antipoverty program ever known" (Woodstock Report, June 1999). And, in Social Security and Its Enemies (Westview Press), political scientist Max Skidmore makes a case for Social Security as America's most efficient insurance program and one function the government can perform more effectively and fairly than the private sector can. One hundred and fifty million U.S. workers are protected by Social Security. There are few today who remember the destitution many elderly faced before the program existed. People could work hard all their lives and yet, at the end, be faced with consignment to the local "poorhouse" or the shame of being "on the county."

In 1935 Social Security began to change all that. It gave the elderly dignity and a modicum of self-sufficiency, and did that for the subsequent sixty-four years. Moreover, as William Byron, S.J., pointed out at the Woodstock forum, from its beginning Social Security conformed to the principles of Catholic social teaching, among them the little-understood principle of subsidiarity. That principle limits government by insisting that no higher level of organization should perform a function that can be handled at a lower level by persons who are closer to the problems and closer to the ground. "The fact is," concluded Byron, "no individuals or groups, no lower levels of government or private organizations could have done what Social Security began to do in 1935."

But now Social Security is threatened. By the year 2034 the ratio of beneficiaries to wage earners will change dramatically. People are having fewer children than they did during the baby boom. They are living up to twenty years longer than they used to after reaching sixty-five. And many are retiring sooner. At the forum, Matthew Weidinger, a staff member of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, explained the problem clearly: "If you understand that Social Security is a program that taxes workers today to provide benefits primarily to retirees and other beneficiaries today, then you understand the impact of these changing demographics," he said. "Where once we had about forty workers per beneficiary, today we have three workers per beneficiary, and by the time I retire there will be only two workers per beneficiary."

That is certainly a dire prospect. There is no way that such a diminished number of workers can provide the funds for adequate payments for that number of retirees, if taxes and benefits are maintained at the current rate. A solution must be found other than raising the tax a projected 15 percent or cutting benefits by 13 percent. But is the solution proposed by those for whom Weidinger works, Congressmen Bill Archer (R-Tex.) and Clay Shaw (R-Fla.), the best one? That was the leading question raised at the Woodstock forum.

According to Weidinger, the ArcherShaw plan proposes to take the current Social Security surplus and distribute it among workers by giving them tax credits to be deposited automatically in savings accounts in the workers' names. Thus, every year everyone in the work force covered by Social Security would get a tax credit. The savings account built over time could be used by the workers to choose investments. Ultimately these beneficiaries would have individual accounts that would support their Social Security benefits.

Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Higgins Labor Research Center at the University of Notre Dame and another participant in the forum, objected to the plan as a disguised kind of privatization. "You can't think of Social Security as a system of accounts," she said, "just as you wouldn't think of your fire insurance coverage as a place where you have an account. It is insurance. It's social insurance." As a contributing worker, if you are disabled or live past retirement age, then you get the benefit of the insurance that is Social Security.

Ghilarducci's own proposed remedy for strengthening Social Security is to expand the payroll base, which is now capped at $68,000 a year, whether you are the average worker or a very wealthy one like Bill Gates. Expand the cap base to $90,000 or perhaps $100,000, she contends, and you solve the problem.

In an addendum to the Woodstock Report, Father Byron noted that, given the forum's responsibility, it was not surprising that the panel discussion focused on the Archer-Shaw plan. Another plan meriting serious study is that of Robert M. Ball, the person who has had the most effect on Social Security since its beginning. Ball was the Social Security commissioner under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

According to the July-August AARP Bulletin, it was Ball who developed the Social Security disability insurance program, managed the enrollment of millions into Medicare, put into effect the automatic cost-of-living adjustment for retirees, and oversaw a 25-percent growth in benefits. Ball is concerned that reformers will wreck the successful system by trying to privatize it in one way or another. Any option of diverting a portion of payroll taxes into individual investment accounts is privatization; it would take money out of Social Security trust funds and make it difficult to award full benefits to current retirees.

Ball does not dispute the necessity of doing something to avert the future crisis, but he argues that a few adjustments can preserve Social Security's benefits for generations to come. He favors, as does Ghilarducci, a tax increase, not for everyone, but for people at the high end of the income scale. His approach is two-part: First, increase the maximum amount of wages subject to Social Security taxation in small steps over ten years, eventually to about $187,200 over a decade. Second, as President Bill Clinton has proposed, use part of the projected huge federal surplus to bolster the Social Security trust funds. Ball favors investing about 15 percent of this money in Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) bonds or high- grade corporate bonds with a higher yield than the Treasury notes in which the fund now invests exclusively.

These steps, Ball believes, along with smaller changes like including new state and local government employees in Social Security, would avoid the anticipated deficits and assure full benefits for seventy- five years.

In the light of Catholic social teaching, these proposals and all others to guarantee the long-term viability of Social Security must be evaluated in terms of the common good. The common good clearly includes economic security above the poverty line for those of and past retirement age. As a guide to evaluating any plan, William Byron recommends the criteria for reform proposed in a recent book, Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate by Henry J. Aaron and Robert D. Reischauer (Century, 1998). The authors' final word, after listing their criteria, is a touchstone for our consideration: "No plan that provides inadequate benefits, fails to protect low earners, and gives a poor return for each dollar of taxes paid; that subjects workers to excessive risk; that generates needless administrative complexity; and that does nothing to boost national saving should merit serious consideration."

Little is more important to us now than giving thought and support to how the most successful antipoverty program ever known is to be saved.