Social Security campaign is political grave-robbing
WASHINGTON
UNABLE TO find any live Democrats to join his Social Security cause, President Bush has tried to recruit a dead one on false pretenses and with false claims.
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From the grave, however, Daniel Patrick Moynihan has added to the blows Bush has received on the issue from people who could have been supporters -- four by my count, including the late philosopher-senator from New York -- just since his narrow reelection last November.
The result reflects the odd political situation the president is saddled with as his second term begins for real this week with a State of the Union address followed by a confrontation with reality called the federal budget. Instead of the honeymoon that normally accompanies victory, Bush starts out decidedly weaker than he was the morning after his win over John Kerry.
Ironically, until he started abusing Moynihan's legacy, all of the true trouble Bush was facing was coming from Republicans -- worried not so much about confronting a vexing and controversial issue as concerned by his unwillingness to confront tough choices.
As his inauguration neared, with neither a detailed proposal nor a coalition to cover him, Bush began citing Moynihan to advance his cause, much as a drowning person might reach frantically for a life preserver. It is more than desperate, however; it is dishonest.
The abuse of Moynihan stems from his role as cochairman (with
Starting last month, the distortion campaign has tried to create the impression of support. As Bush said, ''Much of my thinking has been colored by the work of the late Senator Moynihan and other members of the commission who took a lot of time to look at this problem and who came up with some creative suggestions."
Bush's deception was amplified by constant references from administration spokesmen, including most recently Treasury Secretary John Snow on the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal.
That last blast got a response from Moynihan's devoted and passionately Democratic family last week as well as from his most frequent collaborator on fresh Social Security thinking, former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.
The Bush assertions are wrong in terms of what the commission did, and wrong about Moynihan's actual views, as well as wrong about the context in which he expressed them.
Working with Pat Moynihan on tough issues has always been challenging as well as rewarding, ever since this innovative iconoclast tried to help advise Richard Nixon on domestic issues during his first presidential term. On Social Security, I weighed in on his (and Kerrey's) key difference with Bush more than three years ago.
It boiled down to the all-important difference between two concepts of investment accounts -- those ''carved out" of existing payroll tax revenues that pay for current benefits versus those ''added on" to the existing, intact structure. At that time, Moynihan was a committed ''add-on" guy and in private comments to some writers underscored his position as well as frustration with a meddling White House that opposed inclusion of the idea.
Never one to be silenced, the great man managed to wedge a short presentation of his views into his introduction to the final report. His position had been endorsed by Bill Clinton near the end of his presidency and by Al Gore during the 2000 campaign.
It is a fact that Moynihan and Kerrey had supported investment accounts in the late 1990s, but only with responsible financing from a lifting of the income ceiling on payroll taxes and higher rates after a 10-year phase-in.
It is also a fact that he had been more than willing to consider reductions in the pace of future benefit increases, but Moynihan favored a pay-as-you go transition -- including limits on inflation adjustments, taxation of benefits, a higher eligibility age, and benefit adjustments to reflect higher life expectancy.
Above all, Moynihan and Kerrey were thinking anew at a time when a $5.6 trillion surplus loomed. Moynihan would have considered the government's current, deficit-plagued mess obscene. He was the first person to charge in Reagan's time that red ink was being used to create crises to force cuts in entitlement programs and he was the first person to attack the use of the Social Security surplus he helped create to cover operating deficits.
The Bush crowd is famous for its willingness to say anything politically to get ahead. From the grave, however, Moynihan's lifelong intellectual honesty mocks the perversion of his thinking now being attempted in desperation.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com. 
