1. Thus, the full social security system is OASDHI: Old Age, Survivors, Disability and Hospital Insurance. [BACK]

2. Paul Light, Artful Work: The Politics of Social Security Reform (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 136-37. [BACK]

3. George J. Church, "A Debt-Threatened Dream," Time, May 24, 1982, pp. 16-27. [BACK]

4. Ibid. [BACK]

5. Light, Artful Work, p. 160, and chap. 13, pp. 152-62. [BACK]

6. A larger explanation of the politics of assumptions may be found in ibid., pp. 45-57. The economic forecasts determined not only the dimension of the problem but also the size of some solutions. Thus, a projection of high inflation meant that freezing or postponing the COLAs would save more money than if inflation were actually low. [BACK]

7. Ibid., p. 171. [BACK]

8. Report of the National Commission on Social Security Reform (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, January 1983), Appendix K, Tables 5A, 5D, 13. [BACK]

9. Ibid., Table 3A. [BACK]

10. Ibid., Appendix K, Tables 7C and 11. [BACK]

11. Peter G. Peterson, "The Salvation of Social Security," New York Review of Books, December 16, 1982, pp. 50-57. [BACK]

12. Quoted in Eric F. Kingson, "Financing Social Security," Policy Studies Journal 13, no. 1 (September 1984), p. 139. [BACK]

13. Harry Anderson, "The Crisis in Social Security," Newsweek, June 1, 1981, pp. 25-27. [BACK]

14. Light, Artful Work, p. 66. [BACK]

15. Harry Anderson et al., "The Social Security Crisis," pp. 18-23; and Tom Morganthau, "Legions of the Old," Newsweek, January 24, 1983, p. 23. [BACK]

16. Out of average costs of 14.09 percent, taxes would exceed benefits into the second decade of the new century. See Table 5 in Appendix J, National Commission on Social Security; and Light, Artful Work, p. 171. [BACK]

17. These OASDI figures are calculated under 2B assumptions. National Commission on Social Security, Appendix K, Table 9B. [BACK]

18. The percentage of taxable payroll poses a whole different set of questions: If wages constitute a lesser proportion of GNP, what is the balance? Are profits and rentier income higher than before? Why? How are workers talked into that? [BACK]

19. National Commission on Social Security, Appendix K, Tables 7B, 9B. [BACK]

20. Kingson, "Financing Social Security," p. 145. [BACK]

21. Light, Artful Work, p. 169. [BACK]

22. Ibid., p. 172. Only newly hired federal employees or those with less than five years service would be included. [BACK]

23. Because a mere ten years' employment entitles a person to full social security benefits, some people combined thirty-year careers in federal service with ten outside and thus achieved double pensions. Those who advocated including federal employees argued also that the survivors and disability provisions of social security were desirable and that a combination of social security with a supplementary annuity would provide employees much more flexibility in leaving government. Employee unions, however, believed that CSR gave them a better deal. They also preferred to keep policy within a pond—the House Post Office and Civil Service and Senate Government Affairs committees—in which they were the big fish; the social security ocean seemed big and very risky. Finally, CSR, based on the contributions of current employees, was no more self-financing than OASDI; it had big deficits. If new employees did not contribute to the old CSR system, where would benefits come from? The government, of course, but the numbers would be big, and there might be pressure for cuts. The unions' position made sense—so long as the issue was CSR. When the issue became the health of OASDI, however, they got rolled. [BACK]

24. National Commission on Social Security, Appendix K, p. 21. [BACK]

25. Light, Artful Work, p. 173. [BACK]

26. Ibid., pp. 173-74. [BACK]

27. Ibid., p. 179. Why the number for coverage expansions doesn't fit Light's other figures, we cannot say. [BACK]

28. Ibid., p. 186. [BACK]

29. Ibid., pp. 184-85. [BACK]

30. Ibid., p. 187. [BACK]

31. National Commission on Social Security, pp. 2-10. [BACK]

32. See Kingson, "Financing Social Security," pp. 149-50. [BACK]

33. Compare the $18 billion figure to the National Commission's report, Appendix K, sum of Tables C-8 through C-11, to get a sense of why one would be skeptical of the figures. [BACK]

34. National Commission on Social Security, pp. 2-12 to 2-13. [BACK]

35. Light, Artful Work, pp. 198-99. [BACK]

36. Susan Tifft, "Assaulted from All Sides," Time, January 31, 1983, p. 28. [BACK]

37. Susan Tifft, "Taking Two Aspirin Won't Do," Time, February 28, 1983, p. 21. [BACK]

38. Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1983, Vol. 39 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1984), p. 222 (hereafter CQA 1983). [BACK]

39. Light, Artful Work, pp. 209-11; CQA 1983, p. 223. [BACK]

40. Light, Artful Work, pp. 213-14; and CQA 1983, p. 225. [BACK]

41. Light, Artful Work, p. 217. [BACK]

42. "Congress Acts on Jobs and Social Security," Newsweek, April 4, 1983, pp. 22-23. [BACK]

43. See Light, Artful Work, pp. 225-26. [BACK]

44. Peter J. Ferrara, Social Security: The Inherent Contradiction (San Francisco: Cato Institute, 1980). His latest statement is "Social Security Prospects for Real Reform," a paper delivered to the Pacific Forum, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, April 29, 1988. [BACK]