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Majority already supports investing Social Security funds

Texas Gov. George Bush modestly proposes to allow Americans to invest 2 percentage points of their Social Security taxes in individually controlled retirement accounts. He's touched what used to be called the "third rail of American politics" -- mess with Social Security, and you're dead as a candidate. But that was the old paradigm, before America became a nation of investors.

Vice President Al Gore's attacks on the modest Bush plan as a "risky scheme" aren't sticking. In fact, the more that individual control of Social Security taxes is discussed as an issue, the more people seem to support the idea.

The Cato Institute provides the following round-up of recent polls on turning Social Security at least partially into individually controlled retirement accounts:

• Cato-Zogby Poll, August 1999: 55 percent prefer individual accounts, 31 percent oppose.
• CNN-USA Today-Gallup Poll, January 2000: 62 percent favor, 33 percent oppose.
• Zogby Values America Poll, March 2000: 68 percent favor, 31 percent opposed.
• ABC News.com, May 2000: 64 percent favor, 31 percent opposed.

These polling results tell a couple of stories, neither one terribly surprising. First, Americans largely favor the idea of at least partial Social Security privatization. Second, Americans' views already appear pretty settled on the matter. There aren't many undecideds.

Considering that well more than half of all Americans now participate in equities markets through mutual funds and individual stock holdings, mostly through IRAs and employer-sponsored 401k plans, it would be surprising if Americans had great discomfort with similarly controlling how their Social Security taxes are invested.

Few issues in this election year will more clearly draw distinctions between Bush's politics and Gore's politics. Bush cleverly has found an issue that resonates well with younger voters, while Gore is sticking to the old "scare Grandma" tactics of the past. Indeed, an elderly voter recently scolded Gore at a town hall-style meeting for trying to scare seniors out of considering Social Security reform, when he well knows that Bush's plan- - and most privatization plans -- protect those already in retirement or too close to retirement to make alternate plans.

If the polls continue on present trends, there might even be a substantive discussion of Social Security reform in the course of the presidential campaign.