Hands in the Cookie Jar

There's a reason Democrats keep blocking the Social Security "Lockbox".

by Rod D. Martin
August 24, 1999

That Bill Clinton lies -- even about something as important as Social Security -- is certainly not news.

But that Bill Clinton is willing to throw away one of the Democrat Party's core constituencies just fourteen months before a visibly weakening Al Gore goes to the polls ought to give his supporters pause. And yet quite the opposite seems to be true.

The battleground? A Republican plan to designate every last penny of the Social Security surplus for -- gasp! -- the Social Security program. Called the Social Security "Lockbox", this plan has garnered widespread support for the simple reason that it does what Democrats have always promised and never delivered: it requires, by law, that your retirement savings be spent not on crucifixes in urine or midnight basketball but, of all things, your retirement.

The Lockbox could be called a reform long overdue. But that would be an understatement bordering on the ludicrous. The Lockbox is nothing more or less than …