Washington – There are men of little vision who frequent our politics: loutish commentators, puny partisans and timid officials who can’t see beyond the boxes of red and blue, Democrat and Republican, right and left.
Bill Thomas is no such man.
Thomas chairs the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. It is a big job.
The Constitution reserves for the House the power to initiate tax measures, and the House delegates that power to Ways and Means.
His is a committee for grown-ups. For serious men and women. For making law.
Some of the toughest issues on Capitol Hill – trade, tax reform, health care and retirement funding – are handled by the California Republican and his colleagues. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Thomas may now represent President Bush’s best hope for making changes in Social Security.
In a series of appearances over the past 10 days, Thomas has argued that the best way to fix Social Security’s long-term financing problems is to make the issue bigger, not smaller.
And so, Thomas asks: What other demands does aging America face?
Chronic illness and long- term health care. Soaring Medicare and Medicaid costs. Parents trying to balance work and family. Crumbling private pension plans. A dismal national savings rate.
Thomas wants to throw them into the mix.
In terms of both the politics and the policy, Congress should not “look only at the pieces in the Social Security box.”
Thomas, as befits a former political science professor, wants to go outside the box, to assemble a bipartisan coalition that offers something for Democrats and Republicans.
“It won’t just be a Social Security bill; it will be a retirement bill,” the chairman says. “Members will look at the total package, and that is one of the ways you’re able to make law … to provide a package in which people see something they can support.”
Democrats might get pension guarantees for workers, a more progressive Social Security benefit and solvency for the system, new streams of revenue for Medicare and Medicaid, and – for the first time – a federal guarantee that no senior will live in poverty.
Republicans could get some form of personal retirement accounts to compensate those wealthier folks whose benefits will be pared, new and better IRAs, and other tax breaks to maximize savings.
The White House won’t admit it, but Thomas acknowledges that the costly Medicare- drug bill he helped push through the House in 2003 is flawed. He may even take a crack at repairing that legislation.
It won’t be easy. All good things cost money. And Democrats have voiced their opposition to even a progressive cut in benefits.
“One of the ways that you can address solvency … would be to indicate that those who have no other option should be the ones who get the best return out of Social Security,” Thomas suggests, while “those who have other options perhaps don’t need to get as much as the current formula projects.”
In other words, he’s ready to pare benefits for the middle class and the rich. The Democrats, however, would rather tax the wealthy.
It’s not that Democrats object to making Social Security more progressive, but their top priority is to ensure that the middle class maintains its stake in a broad-based social insurance system. The Democrats know that Social Security has won widespread support and been successful over the years because it benefits all Americans, not just welfare cases.
“They are going to be pressured by the Democratic leadership to stay in lockstep and simply offer ‘no,”‘ Thomas predicts.
Thomas is no squish. He’s a partisan, fully credentialed member of the Republican revolution that has run the House for the past decade. If he can’t get bipartisan support, he says, he will push and pass a Republican bill.
Yet many of his House colleagues are worried that if they cast a tough vote to cut middle-class Social Security benefits, they could be left hanging by the more moderate, gridlocked Senate and pay a price in the 2006 elections.
So Thomas may not succeed. But he has announced his determination to offer Americans something they have yet to see in four months of debate about Social Security: a daring, fully detailed plan we can weigh and endorse or reject.
In raising the issue of Social Security’s solvency, “what the president has done is fundamentally courageous,” says Thomas.
“We’ll accept that challenge.”
John Aloysius Farrell’s column appears each Sunday. Contact him at jfarrell@denverpost.com.
