Newsday (New York, NY)

December 13, 2001 Thursday ALL EDITIONS

SECTION: VIEWPOINTS, Pg. A42

HEADLINE: EDITORIAL;

Delay Will Make It Harder to Rescue Social Security

The president's Commission to Strengthen Social Security has made its final report, but any hope of moves this year or next to restructure the Social Security system has faded - a victim of the economy's weakness, of the new costs of fighting terrorism and of partisan politics.

That's regrettable: Although the will to rescue the system from insolvency in time for the big baby boom generation's retirement is gone, the boomers aren't. And the longer Washington puts off action, the more difficult it will be to act. The commission offered three alternative plans for Social Security designed to reflect President George W. Bush's desire that the system allow individuals to privately invest part of their Social Security contributions. The wisdom of privatization remains uncertain. But the three options made clear the inevitable: To make the system solvent, such shifts would have costs running to billions of dollars a year in some combination of reduced benefits or higher taxes.

That is obvious fodder for Bush's political foes and ensures that nothing will be done until after next November's elections. The truth is, however, that any plan to save the system will inevitably impose big costs - and pretending it won't will only make changes politically more difficult.

As Dan Crippen, director of the Congressional Budget Office, pointed out to a Senate panel Monday, the number of retirees is going to increase rapidly starting in a decade, both because the boomers' generation is so large and because medical advances promise them longer life- spans.

At the same time, growth in the working-age population will slow dramatically. That means there will be relatively fewer people to pay Social Security taxes to support the many retirees.

But it also has a more ominous import: It means that a smaller share of the nation's population will be in the work force, building savings and contributing to the nation's output - making economic growth relatively slower as well.

Crippen urged that the broader concern about the economy be confronted in whatever policy Washington adopts toward Social Security. He's absolutely right about that, but he made no policy proposals, leaving it to Congress to decide what to do. And right now, Congress is in no hurry.