Social Security largely missing from Florida primary debate

MIAMI

Speaking to a group of college Republicans last week, Newt Gingrich mentioned a subject that seems to be off-limits in the Republican presidential primary in Florida: Social Security.

“Chile has had the most advanced Social Security program in the world,” the former U.S. House speaker said during a forum on Latin American issues at Florida International University. “For over 30 years, Chileans have been allowed to put their money into a savings account, not turn it over to politicians, but actually save it.”

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If elected, Gingrich said he would push a similar program for the U.S.

Republican leaders made Social Security a focal point during last year’s debate over the national debt. It gained gained considerable attention earlier in the GOP presidential primary campaign, as former contender Rick Perry defended his assertion that the program was a “Ponzi scheme.”

But it has disappeared from the rhetoric as frontrunners Gingrich and Mitt Romney head for the showdown in Florida Tuesday. Social Security wasn’t even mentioned in the two high-stakes debates this week in Tampa and Jacksonville.

Its absence from the discussion belies Social Security’s importance to everyday life in the state. Some 3.6 million Floridians rely upon the retirement and disability system, which provides some $45.5 billion in benefit payments each year in the state. Although the median annual benefit for a retired worker is only $13,700, it lifts some 1.5 million Floridians out of poverty.

But Social Security is also a troubled system, with the program paying out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes. By about 2037, congressional budget experts project the program will have exhausted its trust funds — essentially making it bankrupt.

None of the candidates are talking about changing the program for retirees already drawing their Social Security checks or for those workers close to entering the system.

But Social Security’s financial future is a growing concern for Florida’s younger workers.

“Social Security is an issue that generationally is much more interesting almost to younger voters than it is to older voters,” said Susan MacManus, a political scientist from the University of South Florida who has written extensively on generational politics.

She said the GOP candidates “missed the opportunity” to address the issue in their two Florida debates, which occurred on college campuses.

But the issue will be front and center in the fall when the Republican nominee will have to go against President Barack Obama. The Democrats are already trying to position their party as the “protector” of Social Security while portraying Republican plans to change the system as risky schemes.

Yet, Obama himself has raised the possibility of changing the system. During deficit reduction talks in the summer, Obama advanced the idea of limiting the Social Security inflation index, but he pulled the issue from the discussions when he and Republican congressional leaders clashed in the debt talks.

Although not all the Republican candidates have offered detailed plans on Social Security, they are in agreement that workers should be able to invest some or all of their payroll taxes into “private” retirement accounts.

“Individual retirement accounts offer a fourth option (to fix Social Security), one that would allow today’s wage earners to direct a portion of their Social Security tax to a private account rather than go entirely to pay the benefits of current retirees,” Romney wrote in his 2010 book “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.”

Romney has also called for gradually raising the Social Security retirement age “to keep pace with increases in longevity,” although he has not provided any specifics, according to an analysis by the AARP.

Social Security is already increasing the retirement age from its original 65 to 67.

Rick Santorum, who also supports letting younger worker invest in private accounts, advocated for a retirement age of 70 when he first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1994.

Ron Paul has called Social Security one of the country’s “unconstitutional” entitlement programs. He said the system should be abolished, although he said it would be done gradually. He has supported legislation for individual retirement accounts.

President George W. Bush pushed individual retirement accounts after his re-election in 2004, only to run into a firestorm of opposition, forcing him to drop the plan.

Gingrich has said his plan, based on the Chile model, is different because it also provides “a safety net.” If the workers’ investments fail to provide the same amount they would have earned under the old program, the government would make up the difference.

He said the Chile program has been so successful that “in 30 years, they have written zero checks,” and that the system “has produced two to three times the return per person that a traditional government-dominated, bureaucratic-managed system does.

“This is not a theory; this is a fact,” he said, noting that he has consulted with Jose Pinera, Chile’s former labor secretary who developed the program in 1981.

Critics say many of the changes advanced by the Republican candidates will endanger the Social Security system.

Letting workers invest in private accounts exchanges Social Security’s “guaranteed benefits with a risky Wall Street gamble,” according to a critique from a coalition of labor groups, teachers, government workers and consumer advocates called “Strengthen Social Security.”

“Privatizing Social Security would place all risk on the individual, subjecting benefits to the risks of the stock market,” the group said. “By diverting funds away from Social Security and into private accounts, the proposal undercuts the future financing of the program, effectively ending Social Security as we know it.”