COMMENTARY: Criticism Deflected, Absorbed

— Let us present one of those columns in which I reveal reader criticisms and respond to them.

I offer these either when criticisms are so inane that they provide comedic entertainment and make me look good by comparison, or, more rarely, when criticisms are sufficiently substantive and credible that I feel a need to explain or amend.

Today’s installment is the latter case and covers only two items.

Reader criticism: It is that I was guilty of misstatement, even nonsense, when I wrote the other day that “real longterm deficit reduction means finding a way to reduce the rate of spending growth in Social Security and Medicare.”

The specific criticism is that Social Security has nothing to do with the federal deficit, but is a separate and self-sustaining insurance program that is healthy on its own and does not bear on the federal treasury.

My response: The reader criticism is correct. Social Security is not a part of the federal deficit and is fine for now.

In self-defense, though, I would ask that you consider what I wrote. It was that “real long-term deficit reduction” means reversing the trend of Social Security.

Some of the Social Security Trust Fund is made up of loans to the U.S. Treasury to help finance the government deficit. So, while these indeed are separate pots, the interdependence means we cannot fully separate them for long-term policy making.

Social Security actually slipped into a one-year deficitsituation last year, perhaps only as an aberration because of the recession. But, by most estimates, it will enter this situation recurrently in a few years and, by 2037, if nothing is done, be unable to pay benefits at the level now paid and forced to reduce benefits by more than a fifth.

We should tax income for Social Security above the current annual cap of $106,800.

We should do that before we move back the retirement age.

While it is true that most of us work at physically undemanding jobs and will live longer than our ancestors lived, there are still those doing hard manual labor and wearing out their bodies.

Pushing them back to 68 or 70 for Social Security should be a last resort.

Reader criticism: It is that I, no engineer, must be blissfully unaware that repairs to the Broadway Bridge between Little Rock and North Little Rock would cost nearly as much as new construction.

Surely even I can understand, or so the metaphor goes, that, at some point, one must quit plugging the oil leaks in the old clunker’s engine and buy a new automobile.

My response:

I have an old European convertible that leaks oil. I couldbuy a new car. I could pay more than a thousand bucks to have this seal replaced. Or I could keep the oil checked and carry a fresh can of oil in the trunk.

I’m going with the latter right now because it is cheaper and this is one fine little motor car, oil seepage notwithstanding.

Come spring I’ll be putting that top down and it will be great fun, not to mention easier to smell the leaking oil burning on the exhaust pipe.

The Broadway Bridge is not unsafe. It is merely graded as “structurally deficient.”

I asked the Highway Department about the relative cost of repair versus replacement. Officials there didn’t know. The engineers merely decreed pre-emptively that repair, while not impossible, and while not necessarily as expensive, was not “viable.”

Those piers are concrete and the concrete is showing age, they say.

Of course these concrete piers are steel-reinforced, and steel is, well, steel.

At the very least the Highway Department owes us serious actual study of more preservation-oriented alternatives.

Preserved and refurbished old things hold an important place in our ethos, standing as community signatures and as monuments to a heritage of which we are proud and that we value.

I don’t want old folks to lose even part of their Social Security. And I don’t want to tear down what they built.

JOHN BRUMMETT IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU IN LITTLE ROCK.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 02/24/2011

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