Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 447 BOB DOLE The Life That Brought Him There (Part 28) Saving Social Security

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Episode 447 BOB DOLE The Life That Brought Him There (Part 28) Saving Social Security · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:25
  SPEAKER_07: You probably uh heard or read or someone may have mentioned that there's an effort uh in the Congress now to change the Social Security system, to rescue the Social Security system.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_07: The Social Security system is in some difficulty, and I think we should take steps to we're gonna have to increase the tax rate a little bit for employees and somewhat for employers to balance the system.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_07: But there are also those in Congress.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_07: In fact, the administration suggests, the Carter administration, that we dip into the general revenue uh fund to pay for Social Security benefits.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_07: This, in effect, would subject uh the Social Security system becoming in the future a welfare program.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_07: It's not a welfare program.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_07: You've in effect earned your right to Social Security, and I would hope that we could resist the efforts to turn it into some welfare type program.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_07: I'm opposed to this concept.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_07: I think most members of Congress are.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: They figure until about 2028.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so uh we're just now gonna be in a situation where uh you're getting ready to start dipping into the trust fund and all that.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: But Bob Dole bought this from 1983 to today, um, you know, 40 years of um good management.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: And he did it by reaching across the aisle with Pat Moynihan, who was a senator on the Democratic side, who had actually begun his career working with uh he began it there, but working with Richard Nixon, a Republican.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: And um and Dole talked about this on the Senate floor when he was uh ri resigning.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: But in 1982, the trust fund was in trouble.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna hear some of these folks talk about where it was at and what happened that led to this commission, and then we're gonna hear from Alan Greenspan, who went on to become uh the chairman of the Fed uh and uh was uh instrumental in saving Social Security.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: It was the Greenspan Commission, so uh but Dole and Pat Meon at Moynihan were on it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you're gonna hear uh their perspective on this major moment in the history of Bob Dole's career and in the history of the nation.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_20: The only time in the history of Social Security thus far there was a negative case flow.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_20: We were pouring general fund money into it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_20: So we had to reform Social Security.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_20: But it wasn't done so much within committee.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_20: You know, Reagan set up a commission made up of people like Bob Dole and Greenspan and uh and and Wong and I suppose uh uh Moynihan, people like that.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_20: I'm not sure exactly who was on it, but uh uh they came to a bipartisan compromise.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_20: Uh uh you know uh the the Speaker of the House was involved in it.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_20: It was kind of uh Bob Dole Reagan uh uh I can't think of the speaker's name.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_20: Oh, Tip O'Neill.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_20: Tip O'Neill.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_20: Thank you for reminding me.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_20: Uh Tip O'Neill.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_20: Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan got Social Security straightened out.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_20: So in a couple years, it was having a positive cash flow again.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_06: It's like Social Security Commissions, you know.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_06: The only one that ever worked was the one in 1983.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_06: When uh when Senator Moyna and I, Ronald Claude Pepper and Alan Greenspan was chairman of that commission.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_06: But uh that did work.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_06: And we did adopt.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_06: Social security is still good and it's gonna be good until 2017 at least.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_06: But most of them you point a commission, they report, and that's the don't call me, I'll call you, and that's the end of it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe a couple little things get in, and it's it's the way to, you know, don't have to make the tough choices.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_06: You blame the commission.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_06: I'm not on the commission.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_06: Bob Dole was on the commissioner.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_06: Bad morning.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_09: It's not just security.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_09: Saving social security.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, yes.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_08: Uh we've got the Alan Greenspan on Friday.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_08: Good.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_08: What should I ask?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_08: Alan Greenspan?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_08: Oh boy.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_08: Um is it is it fair to say that the Greenspan Commission was one thing, but that the actual endgame was something else.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_12: Um you know, you can get all of the content in the world uh in all of the proposals, but at the end of the day, that's that deal, those relationships are what happens in the Senate and on the floor.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_12: And you know, we've all seen commissions come and go, but it doesn't if it doesn't have the right standing or the right constituency.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_12: Um and there was certainly an urgency about this, no question.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_12: Um Why had the Democrats it's too much because they had very successfully exploited the issue in 82.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_09: Right.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_09: And tell me, had the commission been established before the election or after?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_12: I don't remember.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_12: I don't remember.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_12: Okay.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_12: Don't remember.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_12: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_09: And what I mean, what were the dynamics within it?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_09: Um because clearly you had some people who were um, you know, fight to the last uh redoubt defenders of system of the right, right.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_12: Um, you know, Carolyn Weaver's probably the best uh since she was a participant in it to tell you what the dynamics internally were like.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_12: Um but again, I think going to your original question, which is there was the commission, there was the report, but then there was the final action um and the resolution in the Senate.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_12: And um I think that is a the dynamics of the personalities involved, of Moynihan, of Dole, of others.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_09: Um Tell me about the relationship between because on the surface the the two men who are about as different different as could be.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_12: Could be.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_12: You know, it's interesting because you know Dole commented on Moynihan in his farewell speech on the Senate floor about that unique relationship.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_07: I remember in 1983, and I know Pat Moynihan members were standing right over in this aisle.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_07: We had a bipartisan commission on Social Security.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_07: We met week after week, month after month, and it was about to go down the drain.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_07: We've about to give it up.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_07: Everybody was just disgusted, we were getting short-tempered.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_07: We were Democrats and Republicans unlike John Hines as a member of that commission.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_07: The chairman of the Finance Committee, I was a member of the member of Saturday morning.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_07: I was a member of the center of the chance or free, or whatever.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_07: Make it work, make it solve.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_07: Thirty-seven million of them.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_07: So we reached across partisan lines.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_12: I think they were both uh they came from such different places, but I think they were both people who were legislators.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_12: I think um uh in Moynihan Dolsall an extraordinary intellect.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_12: I mean, just an extraordinary intellect.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_12: And uh sort of an odd set of um views.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_12: I mean, if you think of, you know, Moynihan and the Nixon days, I mean, sort of uh, you know, his foreign policy issues, his social welfare and domestic issues, sort of welfare policy, um, I think uh also somebody who had an extraordinary mind, who was open to a variety of points of view, who didn't take an i you know, sort of an ideological sort of this is it, you know, I'm only gonna go this way, unpredictable at times.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_12: Um an extraordinary sense of humor, extraordinary warmth, um, you know, had his personal challenges.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_12: Um you know, there were things you didn't do after a certain point in the day.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_12: Um but um at the heart of it, somebody who was so direct uh with whom you could have a conversation and know exactly where he was.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_12: There was no nothing duplicitous about Moynihan.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_12: Um and so you know, Dole could have a conversation with him, they could, you know, and um you knew exactly where you were, what you were getting.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that was everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_17: If Pat Moynihan had been eardropped into New England in the 1770s, he would have been one of the most prominent members of our founding fathers.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: Advisor to four presidents, U.S.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: ambassador to the United Nations, United States Senator, controversial author, prolific often.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_05: And being an assistant secretary of labor in early 64 was one of the people who helped Johnson design what became known as the World of Poverty.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Poverty in America, the advocacy for a minimum level of income for the family, the advocacy for a big jobs program.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: The kind of solutions Wynne advocated for are obviously even in the time we're radical, uh, very, very radical now.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_14: One word that's attached to you wherever you go until you're probably sick to death of it is flamboyant.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_14: Flamboyant ethnic money.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_10: When I would walk down the street with that, taxi drivers would screech to a halt and yell, you're great.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_10: He came back and he told me that Nixon had lost him to be his domestic advisor, and then he accepted was enraged.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_07: But trying to bring government back a little closer to what it is it can be said it knows how to do.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_07: He was not an ideologue, he was an ideas person, but not an ideologue.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_19: When he was in the Senate, he wrote more books than many of his college reads.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_07: The abomination of anti-Semitism has been given the appearance of international thing.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_16: When people talk to me about you, I always refer him to the almond of American politics, which says he's the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and the best politician among thinkers since Jefferson.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_16: How's that sound?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_06: That sounds overstated.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_06: But it's a fine note on which to say it's time to go.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: That's just a little bit about the other senator in this panel that helped save Social Security.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: And Daniel Patrick Moynihan, you know, started out with Richard Nixon, was really a brilliant man.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it and it came across, I think, anybody who covered or followed his career when he was in the Senate or before when he worked with these four presidents, especially Richard Nixon, where he was a uh domestic policy advisor, uh, recognized how brilliant he was.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, one of his ideas that has come back up uh in recent times is a universal basic income.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: And that's one that while I'm a conservative Republican, I I think we might begin to take a look back at because it was a it was an idea that when Richard Nixon tried to do it, um, provided a floor for the working poor.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh a lot of the welfare programs that we've seen happen from the Johnson administration on have been programs that do help the poor, but they don't help the working poor.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: And they push fathers out of the home, and that has done a horrible damage to the poor families in this country.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, when you start taking fathers out of the home, the divorce rate's sky high, or they're no marriage at all rate, and and suddenly you've got children who are in trouble.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and and Moynihan pointed this out in uh one of his or in several of his books.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and so he's an interesting guy.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: But in this context, he's the one who who grabs Bob Dole, he and Bob Dole in the Senate well, and they say, we've got to get back to the table and get this resolved for s uh seniors um uh you know across the country.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_18: It is sessions like this aerobics class for senior citizens that contributes to the longer life expectancies of older Americans, which in turn further burdens the social security system.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_18: But these women from 60 to 73 know they'll have to make sacrifices.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_13: While social security recipients go on without any sacrifice at all.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_11: I don't like the idea that some people are getting into the people who are farmers in that country who never put one penny in.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_11: I think deferring the cost of living is a step in the right direction.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_11: You don't mind getting it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_11: No, I don't.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_11: And I think if this will bail out the system and help, I'm all for it because it only adds to the cost of living when our pensions go up.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_10: When you start drawing the benefits of it, and it's over and above what you have put in yourself.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_10: I think paying taxes on it is right.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_10: Well, it shouldn't be that you just get one pension then.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_10: One pension.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_10: Uh some of them are getting as many as three pensions.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_18: But being a lot of the social security system, regardless of how it is accomplished, will take sacrifices from a lot of people.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_18: But the senior citizens we talk to are more than willing to do their part.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_18: In Newport News, Kathleen Bachman, the Daily News.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Social Security benefits never used to be taxable, uh, going way back when it first came out.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: But in 1984, in an effort to kind of get Social Security back on track from eventually running out of money, they started to effectively tax the Social Security benefits.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: So in 1984, they enacted something that says up to 50% of your social security benefit could be subject to tax.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think it was like 1994, maybe about 10 years later, um, they enhanced that or changed that a little bit and said up to 85% of your social security benefits could be subject to tax.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: So these original uh measures that they used to determine if your social security benefits are subject to tax were made in 1984 and they've never been adjusted for inflation.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: In 1983, the National Commission on Social Security reform, also known as the Greenspan Commission, implemented several fixes, but most notably a six-month delay in the cost of living adjustment and an increase in Social Security taxes for some workers.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: Other key fixes included accelerating payroll tax increases, uh, taxing Social Security benefits for high-income earners, and extending mandatory coverage to new federal and nonprofit employees.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: These measures were designed to address both short-term and long-term financing challenges for the Social Security system.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: The implemented fixes they came up with were delayed cost of living adjustments, a six-month delay in the annual COLA was implemented to achieve near-term savings, accelerated payroll tax increases.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: This was tax increases that were already scheduled, were accelerated to bring in additional revenue sooner.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Taxation of Social Security benefits.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: For the first time, a portion of Social Security benefits for high-income beneficiaries areas was made subject to income tax.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: Extended coverage, mandatory social security coverage, was extended to new federal employees and employees of nonprofit organizations beginning in 1984.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: An increase in the retirement age, the normal retirement age, the age for full benefits, was gradually increased from 65 to 67, but this change was phased in slowly starting in the year 2000.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: The increased self-employment tax, taxes were raised for the self-employed, and then the general revenue transfer, a transfer of general revenue was made to help cover the benefits of former military personnel.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: So those were the fixes that the Greenspan Committee came up with, which I looked up on uh on AI on Google, just so you know where the source was.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: We have uh an oral history from Alan Greenspan, who was he went on to become the head of the Fed, uh, but he was the chair of this committee um that looked into Social Security.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's interesting to listen to him talk.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: He's gonna talk about several subjects along with Social Security, about dealing with Bob Dole, what it was like on the committee, um, and and some other issues they faced together.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought I included all of this this package so you get a feel for what these guys faced, what they were working on, and how hard they had to work together to make this all happen.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: Because there is a big question.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I have it right now when I look at the incompetence of the leadership that we have in this country today, um, across the board, whether or not they are up to the challenge of fixing Social Security and some of the other uh issues that are pretty large financially coming um at all.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: Because I'm not sure they can.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: And that's uh a shame, and that's something that I hope my listeners can listen to, you know, they take to heart with this.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: The way these guys fix problems may not work today, and that could lead us into disaster.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_15: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_15: Uh in fact, where we tend to disagree, it's usually when that pops up.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_15: Really?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_09: How's that?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_09: Can you think of an example?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_15: Well, I can't think of any particular examples, but uh uh I'm more uh I'm more economically conservative than he.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_15: He's willing to do things which I would be very uncomfortable doing.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_15: And one of the reasons, you know, when I actually first became chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, uh Bill Simon, who was then Treasury Secretary, and it wasn't Bill, it was uh it was Rumsfeld who was chief of staff.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_15: He said, we want you to be the uh spokesman for the administration on economic affairs.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_15: And I say, I can't do that.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_15: I can't do that because uh many of the things you are doing uh I can't with a straight face support.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_15: And uh I mean I do support in general, and I do recognize that what I said before, that you're we we it's necessary to compromise to make the system work.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_15: But I can't go out and defend things conceptually if I think they're wrong, because somebody's gonna ask me a question in which I'm gonna say, you know, you're right, I was wrong in what I just said.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_15: Uh and uh uh So it it's in that sort of context where uh uh uh I would be unable to do the types of things that an elected politician must do.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_09: How difficult was it?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_09: I mean, Noel clearly was not a supply signer.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_09: I mean, he it's just he is a traditionalist, almost a moralist when it comes to balanced budgets.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_09: And I think it is a product of that upbringing in that generation.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_15: I mean, the crucial issue is you say, well, what's the economic rationale for a balanced budget?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_15: It misses the point.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_15: It's an ethical issue.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_15: It is a symbol that you don't get something for nothing.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_15: Right.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_15: Or, put another way, you don't borrow to bankrupt your children.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_06: Exactly, exactly.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_09: Eisenhower republicanism in a lot of ways.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_15: You know, it it's essentially an ethical moral position rather than an economic position because if you're dealing strictly with the economics, the literal issue of balancing the budget doesn't make a very much sense, not to mention the fact that uh we're on a cash budget when we should be on an accrual budget, and they are two wholly different types of phenomena.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_15: And so uh it's whatever budget you want, you're on, you want to balance.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_15: So it's not an economic issue because the difference between a cash budget and an accrual budget is huge.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_15: And so if you're saying you want to balance both, you're inconsistent.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_15: But you're not, if you're thinking not in economics, but in cultural or in ethical in an ethical context.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_09: He in 81 was a very good soldier and And um uh was certainly an integral part of the effort on the Hill to get the Reagan package through, even after it obviously this bidding war broke out and uh and then of course the next year comes Tephra, the effort to take some of the ornaments off the Christmas tree.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_09: Um now what were you doing at that point?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_09: Uh what particularly in in 81 and 82, at the beginning, the first Reagan term.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_15: Yeah.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_15: I uh was my only involvement in government, I think I may have been then a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_15: I was a member of a number of Reagan uh commissions and the like, but I had uh no position in in government per se.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_09: The what what was your what was your view in terms of what was going on?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_15: I mean, in terms of both the supply side doctrine and then the subsequent effort by Dole and others to to try to rein in the deficit uh well remember the uh uh I was one of the authors of the budget plan produced during uh the 80 campaign.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_15: And uh we struck you you know Martin Anderson, of course.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_15: Marty and I were sort of the two key players.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_15: We had known each other for a long period of time, and this is one of my best friends going back very far.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_15: And we structured a tax cut, significant tax cut, pretty much what in fact occurred, but it had very large expenditure cuts to go with it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_15: And how specific were you in identifying those uh areas of kind of waste.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_15: For our internal discussions, you know, we said this is a very rough budget, but it is doable.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_15: But for public thing, you'd never you're never allowed to go into the details except that wonderful amorphous number which is not in the budget called waste, fraud, and abuse, which has been the most uh useful device of the political system since Lord knows when.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_09: Which under Reagan apparently never afflicted the Pentagon.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_09: I mean the only waste, fraud, and abuse was to be found in non-defense spending.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_15: Yeah.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_15: But uh there is no item in the budget which is waste fraud and abuse.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_15: Uh but at any event, um uh what happened was uh David Stockton uh, as I recall, came in before any of the cabinet officers were appointed.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_15: And he set up uh I mean we went into the Budget Bureau and actually constructed a real budget.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_15: And it was tough as nails.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_15: I mean, it it was not all that far from the numbers we were saying.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_15: And I remember Reagan saying in the meeting that that was generally discussed when uh David kept saying this is, you know, this is very tough stuff.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_15: Uh uh he may have been president-elect at that time.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_15: Um I'm sure he was.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_15: Uh and uh Reagan said, you know, so long as we treat everyone equally negatively, I'm fine with it.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_15: Uh he never got into the detail.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_15: Yeah.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_15: And that was the budget to a large extent which represented, and it got nowhere.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_15: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_15: With presumably defense being off-limits.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_15: Absolutely.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_15: Yeah.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_15: But still, uh it was essentially constructed.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_15: Now that one of the problems where we we ran then ran into a recession, which uh brought revenues down quite significantly.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_15: But uh the substance of the budget was essentially uh one which was in balance.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_15: And two things uh prevented it from happening.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_15: One, of course, was the recession, but probably more importantly is that you could not get even, I think, a majority of the Republicans to go along.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_15: And needless to say, when the cabinet members were appointed, they were all screaming bloody murder.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_15: Uh so that supply side was not part of the original.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_15: It developed uh largely as a rationale to explain uh why we should why we ought to keep going in this particular mode, because clearly uh tax cuts will pay for themselves and don't have to worry about cutting taxes.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_15: And so it developed there, it's uh it was a fairly recent uh economic phenomenon.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_15: There's always been uh those, uh Milton Freeman being uh one obvious one, who would say economic incentives create fairly significant uh uh uh economic growth, and that therefore the net effect from cutting taxes uh is far less than the original bookkeeping judgment of what the numbers actually were.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_15: But as I quote philosophy, it emerges uh basically with uh uh uh I guess the Art Laffer's uh napkin and uh the the supply curve.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_09: And tell me about the origins and uh history of the Greenspan Commission, because um clearly Dole was a significant part of all of that.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_09: Um but my someone has described um the Commission and the action finally taken on Social Security as statesmanship propelled by panic.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_09: The panic presumably being the looming immediate crisis of Social Security.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_15: Yeah.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_15: Um First of all, uh Reagan came in uh with a that in that year uh with the uh well, first of all, it had been very clear that uh the trust fund was gonna run out of money.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_15: And by statute, uh you can only pay benefits to the extent that you have basic monies in the fund, so that effectively they would be paying uh less than 100 cents on the dollar.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_15: And that was a political potential disaster, which everyone said, you know, we've gotta get it solved.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_15: Reagan uh projected fairly significant uh budget cuts, which the Congress slapped down all over the place because he was essentially trying to make it work.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_15: And uh I think it was probably Jim Baker's idea to form the Social Security Commission.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_15: And uh the commission was a very interesting one, uh it was truly a national commission, and it had uh you know Moynihan and Dole and uh Elaine Kirkland and Claude Pepper and uh with a mandate on both Social Security and Medicare.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_15: And our first uh meeting uh I thought would be essentially the only meeting, because it struck me as that the easy political thing to do in this whole business was to essentially uh uh make clear that the trust fund is a phony.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_15: That all you have to do to solve this problem is to just move X billions of dollars of general revenues into the fund, system solved, nobody did anything to hurt anybody, the books are balanced, and uh uh uh nobody's benefits got cut and nobody's taxes got raised.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_15: And I was all ready to say, you know, uh uh if that's the the judgment of uh this commission, because we can't we don't want to confront the real problem, let's get that out on the table and uh you know do with this thing, because the history of commissions has not been exactly exemplary.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_15: And of all people, Claude Pepper pops up and says, absolutely not.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_15: That would make this a welfare program, and it would be utterly inconsistent with the notion of social insurance.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_15: I will rail adamantly against it, and he scared everyone half silly.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_15: The consequence was that general revenues was taken off the table.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_15: And uh it didn't take us very long to also take Medicare off the table, because there was no way we could confront that, as indeed one still hasn't.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_15: The problem there has not been confronted.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_15: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_09: Was it easier to take it off the table because the the impending threat was was much less imminent in terms of a a collapse or economic uh It was it was it was the Social Security Trust Fund, not the Medicare Trust Fund that was the problem.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, right.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_09: So it was so was it easier to sort of put off Medicare?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_15: Trevor Burrus Yeah.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_15: That was in fact that was almost the very first thing we did, even before we got involved in what we would do.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_15: And we focused basically on Social Security, which is what what the issue really was.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_15: And all of a sudden uh uh we took General Revenues off the table, and I would suspect that uh a significant part of that commission didn't realize that if indeed you did that, you either have to argue that there is no crisis and nothing has to be done, or you have to raise taxes or lower benefits.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_15: And uh Moynihan uh came up with a phrase which I think sort of got most people.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_15: He said, you know, we are all uh uh we are all privileged to have our own opinions, but there is only one set of facts.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_15: And so what happened was that from that first meeting we sent the staff off to developing what all of the facts were.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_15: And when they came back and you know into the next meeting, and everyone looked at the size of what the problem was, and it meant you either had a lower benefits or raise taxes.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_09: Well, presumably and and maybe some combination of uh the moving retirement age or uh No, no, but that's a cutting benefits.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_15: Oh okay.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_15: Oh, sure.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_15: Sure.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_15: Uh and uh the resistance to arithmetic was very evident amongst a number of the members, you know, who were squirt, you know, they you know, how did I get here, you know?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_15: You know maybe two plus two really equals six, you know.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_15: You know, doesn't how do I know your numbers are right, sort of?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_15: And they couldn't a lot, several of them couldn't handle it.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_15: Uh and eventually what uh the way the commission was set up, uh uh I reported to Reagan and to Baker and Bob Ball, who I don't know if you remember him, but he was still around.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_15: Yeah, he's uh he basically reported to uh tip O'Neill, and as the commission proceeded, uh we would we brought along the political system so that when we eventually came to a conclusion, the political system had signed off as as we and uh the whole thing went through like a hot knife through butter.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_15: But uh at the time, uh the question of how to confront these particular issues, uh the combination of Moynihan and Dole were the critical players, was that they took the lead, as I recall it, and uh uh uh essentially overwhelmed uh the rest of the commission.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_15: And uh even though Bob Ball in his uh his memoirs places himself, you know, as really the decision maker, it was an illusion.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_15: Uh and uh it turned out to be one of the most successful presidential, and I should say national commissions.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_15: And uh the reason is you had uh two senior senators, both of whom are fundamentally from the same school, historic school of how you compromise.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_15: I mean uh and they did.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_15: And uh if Dole and Moynihan uh didn't come together in the way they did, uh uh I'm not sure that commission would have worked.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_09: What do you what did you sense uh what Dole's relationship was with Reagan?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_15: Yeah?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_15: No, it's their personalities were so different.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_15: And uh clearly Reagan's ideological base was actually more conservative than his public persona.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_15: Um and to really hear what Reagan was all about, you had to go back to his campaign speech in 64 for for Goldwater, who's what started them all, actually.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_15: Uh and that's really quite uh it's you know, it uh you know, it was r really a strongly uh held uh 19th century view of laissez-faire, uh both in the bedroom and in the marketplace.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_15: And the sharp distinctions that were there were not Dole's view of the world.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_15: Dole's view of the world as I sense it is a lot more nuanced and smooth, and there are no sharp edges.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_15: Whereas Goldwater, the world is principled, or needs to be principled, and principles are sharp edges.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_15: And Dole doesn't think in those terms, and therefore he is the ideal legislator.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_15: In other words, he reaches across the aisle, puts his arm around somebody, and uh talks them into somewhere in the middle, which is a little bit more to his side than the middle, but you know, the guy never knows.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_09: But see, that's fascinating because we have a political process now where it seems, particularly running for president, it's it's much less about narrowing our differences than exploiting those differences.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_09: I mean, that's how you get noticed, that's how you get a base, that's how you raise money.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_09: Absolutely.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_09: But but in some ways it's a disqualification for for leading.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_15: Who contributes to compromise?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_15: Who contributes money to compromise?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_09: Well, but we talked to Alan Greenspan this morning, had a wonderful conversation with him.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_09: And I I gather, although we didn't really ask him specifically, that in this climate today you you couldn't do what you did in 1983.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think it's possible?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_06: It's too political.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_06: When you get when you get a cloud of pepper on your side, you know, Mr.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_06: Sr.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_06: And get a guy like Greenspan chairing the commission, and people like Moynihan who had a lot of cloud with liberal moderate democrats.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_09: Uh by the way, Greenspan went out of his way to credit you and Moynihan with being the people who were really responsible for saving the commission.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, like we did under the January 12th, 1983.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_06: We just almost at the same time blurted out we can't we can't let this happen or them.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_06: But uh, and I never thought like a that Pat's gotten the credit he deserves.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_06: I think I told you I tried to get AARP to run a piece about Pat Mon So Goody.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_06: He was dead, you know.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_06: Didn't want it.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_06: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_19: Something wanna be warm.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_19: The working in the remote democratic and Republican should come together for the finding of this one market legislation.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_19: This bill demonstrates for all the time.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_19: Our notions of our commitment to social security.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_19: It assures the government that America will always keep the promises made in trouble times a half a century ago.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_19: It assures those who are still working that they too have a plan with the future.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_19: From this point forward, one about the problems that they will get their first for the benefits when they were done.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_19: And this bill assures one more thing that is equally important.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_19: It's a clear and dramatic demonstration that our system can still work when men and women of goodwill join together and make it work.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_19: Just a few months ago, there was legitimate alarm that Social Security would soon run out of money.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_19: On both sides of the political line, there were dark discussions.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_19: We want to find a solution.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_19: What could be not put in the law?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_19: What would be found in the law?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_19: We promised that we would protect the financial marketing of social security.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_19: We promised that we would protect beneficials against the laws and beneficials.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_19: Not only those Americans, but young people who have done with the labor force.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_19: And we've done that too.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_19: None of us want to do one of the most profitable.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_19: But the question is about to give up a little in order to get a lot.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_19: But there has been one point, there is one universal agreement.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_19: The social security system must be preserved.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_19: In this compromise, we have struck the best possible balance between the taxes we bought and the benefits of the bill.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_19: What's written the commitment already made to this generation of retirement to the children?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_19: And with more productive lands, these amendments adjust to the problems.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_19: Without becoming an overwhelming burden of generations still to come.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_19: Americans are no longer worrying about the government.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_19: It was nearly 50 years ago when under the leadership of Franklin Dellon Roosevelt, the American people reached a great turning point, setting up the Social Security system.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_19: FDR spoke then of an era of startling industrial changes that tended more and more to make life insecure.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_19: It was his belief that the system can furnish only a base upon which each one of our citizens may build his individual security through his own individual efforts.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_19: Today, we reaffirm Franklin Roosevelt's commitment that Social Security must always provide a secure and stable base so that older Americans may live in dignity.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_19: Now, before I sign this legislation, may I pause for a moment and recognize just a few of the people here who've done so much to make this moment possible.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_19: There are so many deserving people here today, leaders of the Congress, all members of the ways and means and finance committees, and members of the commission up in front here, that it would be impossible to recognize them all.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_19: But first, can I ask Alan Greenspan and members of the commission?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_19: I was going to say to stand, but there are others that are also standing here.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_19: The other members of the commission to stand so that we can recognize them.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_19: Thank you.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_19: And their chairman.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_19: And now, as a special treat, I would like to ask two of our leaders from Congress.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_19: First, step forward for a few words.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_19: Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Honorable Tim O'Neill.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Mr.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: President, Mr.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: Vice President, my distinguished colleagues in government, this is indeed a happy day.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: There are those uh who would question as to whether or not the Social Security Bill was the most important bill that ever did pass the Congress of the United States.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: Others would say there were other acts.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I always believed the Social Security System was the greatest act that ever passed the Congress.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: It gave respect and it gave dignity to the golden age of America.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: This great country of ours has always gone on the theory that each generation pays for the generation before it.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: The golden ages of today are the ones who made America great.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: I want to congratulate the committee that the president appointed, that I appointed, that Senator Baker appointed.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: I want to congratulate the uh the Ways and Means Committee.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Jake Pickle was the chairman of the subcommittee, Dan Rustinkowski, Barbara Carnival, all of the committee.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Senator Pepper from the Aging Committee.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_02: All work together on both sides of the aisle.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: It shows, as the president said, the system does work.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is a happy day for America.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_19: And now the majority leader of the Senate, Senator Howard Baker.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: Mr.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: President, Mr.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_04: Vice President, my colleagues on the platform, and ladies and gentlemen.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_04: It is perhaps one of the littlest noticed but most important aspects of the civility of American government that on occasion we rise above politics.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_04: We rise above confrontation and we address on a bipartisan basis the great challenges and issues that confront the Republic.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes it's been on issues of war and peace.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes it has been on issues of the rights and opportunities of minorities and individuals within our country.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_04: Once on the salvation of the Union itself.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_04: But there's a canny understanding in the American political system that sometimes there are issues that are more important than any of us, or perhaps all of us, taken together.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_04: The preservation of the Social Security system is one of those issues.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_04: And in the uniquely American way, those of us who participate in government, Republicans and Democrats together, public and private citizens, gathered together and subordinated our own views to those of the welfare of the majority.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_04: Mr.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_04: President, I commend you, sir.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_04: I commend the members of this commission.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_04: I commend my colleagues in the Congress, the committees directly involved, and those members who are so intimately involved in this sensitive political issue on a successful conclusion of another chapter in the real greatness of the American political system.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_04: That is, the subordination of our own particular political ambition in favor of the greater good.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_04: I thank.