By Larry Rother

updated 8:59 a.m. ET Aug. 14, 2008

Ignoring the warnings that Social Security can derail political careers, Senator John McCain has infuriated his party’s right wing by saying that “everything has to be on the table” in discussions about keeping Social Security solvent.

Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, does indeed seem to have put everything on the table. In the space of one week, he opened the door to an increase in Social Security taxes, denied he would raise payroll taxes and then, through an ally, called a tax increase a “dumb idea.” He has also sowed confusion about whether he favors privatizing Social Security, or continuing with the current system.

Senator Barack Obama, Mr. McCain’s likely Democratic rival, has been attacked for offering his own, far more specific plan that would raise payroll taxes, though only for the rich. But that criticism has not come from his party and has not been as intense as the denunciations of Mr. McCain.

Party elders and analysts who have seen many a politician fall victim to the jinx of Social Security, which was signed into law 73 years ago Thursday, say they are not surprised.

“All you have to do is open your mouth and you’re dead meat,” said Bill Frenzel, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who is now a Social Security analyst at the Brookings Institution. “If you say you might have to raise payroll taxes, the no-tax crowd jumps all over you. Say you might have to decrease benefits, and the AARP and the Democrats will kill you.”

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Both candidates agree that adjustments to the Social Security formula are necessary because the trust fund, though in surplus now, will begin showing a deficit around 2018, according to actuarial forecasts. Some project that the fund will be exhausted shortly after 2040; others, using less pessimistic calculations of economic and population growth, say that would occur decades later.

Still other economists say such warnings are fear-mongering, and argue that economic growth and immigration, combined with some tinkering, could keep the system solvent indefinitely.

Bullish
The two presumptive nominees do not appear to be among them. But unlike Mr. Obama, whose proposal unambiguously calls for higher taxes on wealthy Americans but also hands his adversary fodder for the fall campaign, Mr. McCain, in refusing to be pinned down, has left many experts wondering what approach he would favor. Somewhat unexpectedly, Social Security surged into the presidential campaigns on July 27, when, on ABC’s “This Week,” Mr. McCain said “there is nothing I would take off the table” in efforts to keep Social Security viable. When asked if that included a tax increase, he twice repeated his “nothing’s off the table” phrase.

That statement was apparently meant to give Mr. McCain maximum flexibility in any negotiations with Congress over the future of Social Security that are sure to be part of the next administration’s agenda, regardless of who wins the election. “John McCain believes we’re not going to be able to start a negotiation with ultimatums,” said Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for Mr. McCain. “What he’s saying is, Let’s keep this out of a polarized political debate.”

But it immediately brought a sharp rejoinder from the Club for Growth, an antitax group, which forced Mr. McCain into verbal acrobatics in which he tried to maintain his personal opposition to a tax increase.

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He also confounded experts by endorsing the idea of individual private accounts, but without clarifying whether he sees them as a tool to augment the existing system or to replace it with some form of privatization similar to what President Bush proposed in 2005.

The distinction is vital. In their mildest form, so-called “add-on” accounts would permit, but not oblige, employees to make contributions above the current payroll tax rate. But a “carve out” approach would reroute some part of current contributions to the system and, in some versions, would be mandatory.

Democrats and their allies oppose the carve-out concept, which they argue could eventually open the door to diverting most of the money going into Social Security and would result in decreased benefits. But they have been less hostile to add-on plans, some forms of which they see as benign.

Though both campaigns are reluctant to name other steps, beyond a payroll tax increase, that might be required to keep Social Security solvent, several proposals are already on the table, including one written jointly by current and former advisers to both candidates.

Video   Obama’s Social Security solution? June 13: During a campaign event in Columbus, Ohio, Sen. Barack Obama says that he would apply the Social Security payroll tax to all annual incomes above $250,000. NBC News Web Extra

Raising the retirement age further, reducing benefits across the board, pegging increases in benefits to inflation rather than wage hikes, and allowing retirement at an earlier age in return for cuts in benefits were all floated in a December 2005 study, “Nonpartisan Social Security Reform Plan.” Its authors included Jeffrey Liebman, now Mr. Obama’s chief Social Security adviser, and Maya MacGuineas, who advised Mr. McCain on the subject in 2000.

Ms. MacGuineas is now an analyst at the New America Foundation, a bipartisan Washington research group. Mr. Griffin of the McCain campaign said the views in the study were “her own” and that “she is not currently an adviser to the campaign.” The Obama campaign, likewise, said the views in the study were Mr. Liebman’s, and not the candidate’s.

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