Word: moynihan
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...issuing a hotly disputed report on female- headed black families. Five years later, as Richard Nixon's adviser on domestic policy, he urged "benign neglect" on racial issues, meaning that the Administration should let racial controversy cool before launching new civil rights initiatives. In the case of Social Security, Moynihan admits that he was out to attract notice through the political equivalent of hitting Congress over the head with a two-by-four. Says he: "You have to get their attention...
...succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, in the process flipping ordinary notions of national politics upside down. For once, Democrats were in the position of presenting themselves as tax cutters. But after initially expressing interest in Moynihan's plan, many Democrats by last week were giving it a wary, and sometimes hostile, second look. Speaker of the House Tom Foley expressed "reservations" about the idea. Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, a Chicago Democrat who has felt the wrath of senior-citizens groups over the catastrophic-health-care surtax, dubbed the proposal a "disaster." Democrats feared that the budget squeeze...
Still, the fact that some Republicans had been caught up in the initial fascination with the Moynihan plan led the White House to launch a hasty counterattack. Budget Director Richard Darman presented Congress with a plan for a Social Security Integrity and Debt Reduction Fund that would require the Federal Government to gradually stop using the surplus to cover Government operating costs. The plan would not begin to take effect, however, until after the 1992 presidential election, and then only in stages. "Phased integrity," Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole mischievously called...
Some integrity is badly needed right now. Until 1983, Social Security was run on a pay-as-you-go basis, with payroll taxes bringing in roughly the same amount that was disbursed as benefits. But that year a bipartisan commission -- on which Moynihan played a key role -- designed a scheme to build a surplus that could swell to $4 trillion by 2010. The money would come from a series of increases in Social Security contributions, which began to phase in six years ago, and from taxing the benefits of higher-income retirees...
Fearful that voters may eventually demand an end to the shell game, Senators and Congressmen from both sides of the aisle are racing to offer alternatives to Moynihan's proposal. Some of the trial balloons...