In Congress they’re talking, as ever, about “means testing” Social Security and Medicare.
The phrase “means testing” is a poor one because it doesn’t sound like what it means, and so normal people will neither quickly understand it nor tend to use it, which will limit its ability to take hold as a reasonable idea. It’s also stupid because it isn’t mean and doesn’t involve a test. You see how literal your blogger is.
What means testing in a general way means, as you well know if you’re reading The Wall Street Journal’s site, is that the very wealthy who do not need to receive a Social Security check or Medicare payments will no longer receive them, or no longer receive them in full. The object is to cut spending. You can argue that means testing would be unjust—people paid into the system throughout their work lives and have the right to receive the benefits in old age, even if the benefits make little difference in their lives and they can do without them. But in a time of unprecedented national debt which has the potential to crater the entire national economy, and considering that the tax burdens we will inevitably have to pass to our children and their children will limit their autonomy and their ability to save and prosper, means testing is a timely idea, a reasonable one, and a conservative one. Conservatives attempt to conserve. Means testing is one way to help continue and conserve the social programs along the lines of financial realism. It’s also a liberal idea: Do what you can to help programs that help the needy.
The idea has been around for decades. I was talking about it the other day with a longtime means-testing proponent who shook his head with frustration. “Do you know what their big argument against it is now?” He meant the more leftward part of the political left. “They’re saying programs for the poor are poor programs.” Meaning spending programs that help only those who need them are insufficiently communal in nature, insufficiently national, and so will in time garner uneven public support.
This idea could take on some steam, and not only because it’s half mad. It actually is mean in that it assumes the wealthy who no longer receive Social Security will turn around and try to kill the program because it would amuse them to see old people, homeless and hungry, suddenly roaming the streets. And there’s always a market for mean political assumptions.
Mickey Kaus has his take here.