"The Clinton-Gore administration has blocked [Social Security] reform at every turn," Bush said at an October 23 rally in Kansas City, Missouri. "For seven and a half years, the vice president has been the second biggest obstacle to reform in America. And now he wants to be the obstacle in chief." Bush did not mention that Gore, as part of the Clinton administration, presided over the biggest assaults on Social Security carried out by any administration for decades.

Despite their varying proposals, the Democratic and Republican politicians advance a similar framework for the debate, presenting Social Security in terms of how individual elderly people can get the best retirement plan or medical care, rather than as a social question of the right to cradle-to-grave coverage for all. Their plans have nothing to do with improving unemployment compensation, pensions, and health care insurance such as Medicare and Medicaid--programs that make it possible for working people to make it through a lifetime.

Both candidates play on the assertion in the big business media that Social Security will begin going bankrupt when the 76 million "baby boomers"--those born between 1946 and 1964--become eligible to draw benefits. This "problem" is exacerbated by the advances in health care, which enable people to live--and collect Social Security benefits--longer. This is why some of the proposals to reform Social Security floated by capitalist politicians and other ruling class figures include raising the legal retirement age for workers who have toiled a lifetime and introducing some type of degrading means testing.

"We are nearing Social Security's greatest test," Bush declared when he unveiled his Social Security reform program last May. "Within two decades there simply won't be enough younger workers to pay the benefits earned by the old," he asserted.

Pressing the idea that Social Security is really an individual retirement account, Bush proposes individuals be allowed to retain a small portion of their Social Security taxes to invest in stocks and bonds. He says that $1 trillion of funds allocated for Social Security should be trimmed from the national budget by 2010 and transferred to these individual accounts. Bush claims these accounts would earn between 3.5 to 7 percent, a gain that would presumably offset projected cuts in Social Security benefits.

While this scheme may work out for some, most working people would lose much-needed income under this gambling scheme. "Historically rising stock averages mask significant periods of stagnation and loss, such as the 1930s and 1970s, which would affect retiree returns in such periods," noted the Miami Herald.

Vice-president Gore has also called for setting up individual retirement accounts, reinforcing the bipartisan offensive against Social Security. Under his plan the government would match deposits into the accounts of low- and middle-income individuals, while supposedly keeping the Social Security program current. Gore, like Bush, portrays Social Security as a fund that will go bust in a few decades, but his plan will supposedly give the government time to work out a solution, his aides insist. Posing as a champion of Social Security benefits, Gore has pounced on Bush's proposals.  
 
Social Security: product of labor battles
On Aug. 22, 1996, the Clinton administration signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, eliminating a federal entitlement program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), that guarantees cash assistance to poor families with children. This measure opened the capitalist rulers' offensive against Social Security, aimed at undermining working class solidarity and paving the way for more sweeping assaults. The AFDC program was part of the concessions codified in the 1935 Social Security Act, which was pushed through Congress that year under the pressure of rising labor struggles.

The 1996 "welfare reform" legislation replaced federal guarantees of cash assistance with lump sums to be distributed by state and local agencies as they see fit until the funds dry up. The so-called welfare reform act also cut off food stamps and Medicaid to many working people. It placed a five-year lifetime limit on receiving welfare, halted benefits to those who couldn't find a boss to hire them within two years, and forced recipients into demeaning make-work projects often below minimum wage.

Since 1996 the 4.6 million families that were on the welfare rolls have dropped by nearly one-half. Last year welfare recipients who held jobs earned an average wage of about $7,200 a year--some $6,000 below the poverty line for a family of three, the average size of a family on welfare.

Meanwhile, the U.S. rulers continue to chip away at Social Security payments. The government announced October 18 that Medicare premiums, deducted from Social Security checks, will increase almost 50 percent next year to $50 a month. Medicare provides health care to 39 million people who are 65 or older or disabled. The premium rise coincides with a 3.5 percent cost-of-living increase in Social Security checks. The cost-of living adjustment, however, will not compensate for the premium hike and the rise in other health care costs, such as prescription drugs, which generally are not covered by Medicare unless a person is hospitalized.

About one-third of Medicare patients have no coverage for prescription drugs, and others purchase expensive private insurance plans that are inadequate. The two presidential candidates have presented proposals that charge monthly premiums for drug coverage under Medicare. But, in harmony with their overall approach, prescription drugs are not to be covered in full for all. Under Gore's proposal the government would pay $25 per month toward drug costs for citizens who qualify for Medicare. Bush's Medicare plan would require the government to pay 25 percent of the monthly charge from insurance companies. Both plans also include means-testing to determine when a person on Medicare would be cut off from receiving full benefits to pay for medicine.