President Bush recently discussed the wonderful process of sperm cell adoption. Appearing in the East Room with 21 families who had used sperm that had been either donated and frozen or "rescued" from discarded prophylatics to conceive children, the president said:

I have just met with 21 remarkable families. Each of them has answered the call to ensure that our society's most vulnerable members are protected and defended at every stage of life. The children here today are reminders that every human life is a precious gift of matchless value. The children here today remind us that there is no such thing as a spare sperm. Every sperm is useful; every sperm is fine. And each of us started out our life this way. These lives are not raw material to be exploited for mere human pleasure, but gifts. And I commend each of the families here today for accepting the gift of these children and offering them the gift of your love.

...of course Bush wasn't talking about sperm; he was talking about embryos. But as I've argued before, he could have been talking about sperm, and it wouldn't have sounded any more ridiculous to me!

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Faggot.

The sad story at this link from Andrew Sullivan

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In San Francisco on Monday, Howard Dean said:

"[The GOP is] pretty much a white Christian party."

He is right. In polls, 82-percent of Republicans identify themselves this way. In response to Dean, an RNC spokeswoman said:

[The Democrats are] a party that's adrift, angry and without any ideas. Because they lack any coherent agenda, Dean is the leader of a minority party resorting to wild-eyed rhetoric.

Sadly, she is right, too. On the Today show, Dean defended himself, but then said, "This is a diversion from the issues that really matter...", as if it were someone else's fault! Does Dean--or anyone else--think saying, and then defending, nonsense like this is going to help his cause?

The "white" part of the accusation is very unfair. After all, who can forget JC Watts, chosen to speak at so many Republican Conventions because of his gift for oratory and his exemplary legislative accomplishments. And who can forget the two (two!) other black GOP Representatives in the US House in the 20th century? But seriously, I think it is very interesting that despite the "diversity" rhetoric on the left, President Bush gets very little credit for appointing an African American woman as Secretary of State. You might dislike her advise, or policy, but it is hard to argue that she is white! (As Saletan points out, to liberals, diversity means "both genders, two colors, several religions, a range of ages, one basic outlook.") Anyway, 57 percent of Democrats also call themselves white Christians, which implies an average of about 2 of every 3 Americans. I wish I could believe that these simple demographic facts were the primary motivation for this excerpt from the Texas GOP Platform (page 9):

"The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States of America is a Christian Nation."

Why doesn't the platform also "affirm" that the USA is a "white nation"? We have to ask why the GOP would have such a declaration in their platform. For many, the possible explanations are not comforting. Andrew Sullivan has written a lot about this issue--for example here and here.

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On 6 September 1819, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Judge Spencer Roane on the topic of the limits of judicial review:

Each of the three departments [executive, legislative, judiciary] has equally the right to decide for itself what is its duty under the constitution, without any regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.

How could this system possibly work when there is disagreement between the three branches, except in forcing the hand of the executive branch to invoke its authority over the armed forces, effectively converting our system from rule of law to rule of force? Whatever the popular opinion may have been in Jefferson's day, you certainly don't hear a lot of political conversations today that question the wisdom of Marbury, the decision that asserted the authority of the courts as the ultimate arbiters of constitutional compliance. Conservatives may bemoan the liberal judiciary, but they generally seem to recognize that changes require constitutional amendments, not violent judicial coups.

But note the remarkable similarity to Jefferson's reasoning in this Schiavo rant on NRO, by Bill Bennett:

It is a mistake to believe that the courts have the ultimate say as to what a constitution means.

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link.) What about the problem of having to resort to force to resolve the intra-governmental tensions? So be it!

It is time, therefore, for Governor Bush to execute the law and protect her rights...Using the state police powers, Governor Bush can order the feeding tube reinserted.

What checks are to remain on the executive branch?

Governor Bush should be judged not by the opinion of the Florida supreme court, a co-equal branch of the Florida government, but by the opinions of his political superiors, the people of Florida. If they disagree with their governor, they are indeed free to act through their elected representatives and impeach him.

An executive plus one-third of the legislature (the Florida State Constitution requires a two-thirds vote for impeachment) should have the authority to over-rule the courts by use of force!? Really? Would Bennett be willing to take a similar gamble on the wisdom of a future President Hillary Clinton?

Preferring to avoid public controversy later in his life, Jefferson in 1819 refused to articulate his opinions publicly, saying,

[The] generation now in place [are] wiser than we were, and their successors will be wiser than they.

Until I read Bennett's piece, I was pretty sure Jefferson was at least right about one thing in that 6-September letter.

P.S. NRO does have a much calmer piece by William F. Buckley. I don't agree with everything, but at least he too rebukes the Nazi analogy.

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Thanks to TNR for a chain of links that led to this article about a boy who died in Texas 10 days ago, after doctors withdrew treatment over the objections of the mother, something Texas law allows. Evidently in Texas, it is your ability to pay the bills that determines whether you live or die...

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A quick clarification of yesterday's Schiavo post: I don't really care about federalism, and stand guilty as charged of raising the issue for convenience. The point is that the GOP's states' rights verneer is equally thin--just enough to cover the occasional Confederate flag. What troubles me most about yesterday's action is that it calls into question my right—and the rights of all Americans—to make what I view as routine and uncontroversial end-of-life decisions without fear of government intervention at all levels. This is very worrisome.

After sending out my SPAM yesterday, I traded a few e-mails with friends and family, and did quite a bit more reading and reflecting. I think I learned enough to make the argument that those who support yesterday's action might make. Here goes...

(For the purposes of the following discussion, let us take for granted that the state-appointed Guardian's report is correct in asserting that Schiavo's cerebral cortex has been substantially liquified. There are some supporters of yesterday's action for whom the precise details of her condition are important, but the heart of the disagreement can be uncovered by assuming that her brain function is essentially confined completely to the brain stem.)

As is made clear in a very general and thoughtful article on the salient issues in traditional Jewish Law, the medical and legal definition of "brain death" is "irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain including the brain stem." Therefore:

A patient may be in a deep coma and nonresponsive to most external stimuli but still very much alive. At most, such patients may have a dysfunctional cerebrum but, by virtue of the brain stem remaining intact, are capable of spontaneous respiration and heartbeat. Indeed, the most famous of these cases, Karen Ann Quinlan, was able to live off a respirator for almost a decade. While such persons may be popularly referred to as brain dead, they are more accurately described as being in persistent vegetative state [PVS] and are very much alive under both secular and Jewish law.

As far as I can tell, the Catholic position is the same, and the immediate consequence, with respect to removing "assisted nutrition and hydration" is that the feeding tubes "must not be withdrawn in order to cause death."

Putting this perspective in very blunt terms, here is Andrew C. McCarthy on NRO, raising the specter of bringing criminal charges against the judge:

Is there anyone who thinks it would have been legal for Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer to order Terri Schiavo to be shot at sunrise? Of course not. He'd be indicted in a heartbeat if he tried such a thing.

That Florida won't intervene to save Schiavo is therefore more than sufficient grounds to justify federal action.

In summary, Terri Schiavo is alive, so withholding food for the purpose of causing her death is no less a criminal offense than deliberately refusing to feed an infant.

How should opponents of yesterday's action respond to this simple and certain argument? Some have chosen to go bonkers about putting aside "the principles of separation of powers, and comity, and of deference to finality and the rule of law." For me, the response is best framed in the words of Robert P. George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a member of President Bush's Council on Bioethics. Yesterday, NRO ran an interview with George, in which he said this:

It is pointless to ask whether Terri Schiavo had somehow formed a conditional intention to have herself starved to death if eventually she found herself in a brain-damaged condition. What's really going on here — and I don't think we can afford to kid ourselves about this — is that Terri's husband has decided that hers is a life not worth having. In his opinion, her continued existence is nothing but a burden — a burden to herself, to him, to society. He has presumed to decide that his wife is better off dead.

George obviously intends to imply that it is inappropriate for any person to ever decide that any other person would be better off dead. The problem is that I agree with the presumption imputed to Michael Schiavo, and I would want my loved ones to be equally presumptuous if my life were on the line! I think heartwrenching decisions to remove feeding tubes from PVS patients are made all around America thousands, if not tens of thousands, of times each year. Does George want to halt all of these? Would George make an oxymoron of the notion of an inoperable cerebral brain tumor? After all, a "cerebrumectomy" leaves the patient better off than dead in his morally certain world. It is clear from subsequent passages in the interview that George doesn't even recognize the right of an individual to decide for herself that she would be better off dead than in PVS: "We should treat her like anyone else who wants to commit suicide. We rescue, we care. We affirm the inherent value of the life of every human being."

I wonder to what extent Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, Dennis Hastert, and even George W. Bush not only agree with Robert George, but would make this perspective into binding federal law? Do people living in a "Culture of Life" give up their right to refuse what they view as futile treatment of terminal illness?!

Another assault made by conservatives on "right-to-die" arguments draws on the memory of recent history, which is replete with too much senseless killing grounded in the assertion that the victims were somehow less than fully human. "Didn't the Nazis think they could ask and answer such questions about Jews, homosexuals, ...?" as one friend asked me yesterday. Pat Buchanan further excoriates "our elites" for their Nazi-like views. But the vital distinction—a distinction frequently raised by Conservatives in other debates—between the Nazi pogroms and the situations in most of the Western world today is that under present law, individuals, not governments, are entrusted with the decision-making authority. Contrary to the hyperbole in virtually every essay on NRO, the judge is not making a decision to end Terri Schiavo's life: her husband, and legal guardian, is. The role of the courts is merely to confirm that this decision has been made in accordance with Florida law, something they have done with excruciating care in this case. It is entirely appropriate for legislatures, either in Florida or in the US Congress, to establish the legal frameworks, subject to the limitations imposed by the applicable constitutional constraints, within which end-of-life decisions must be made. These decisions will necessarily be contemplative and will evolve appropriately with the sensibilities of the society. But legislatures are very poor at making last-minute detailed decisions in individual cases. To get an idea of how bad they are at this task, see Saletan's contemplation of the implications of yesterday's action.

The pro-life position—with respect to either the beginning or the end of life—has the virtues of simplicity and certainty. But the fact that the pro-death position recognizes complexity and concludes with uncertainty does not convince me that it is wrong. On the contrary, it convinces me of the limitations of formal logic in contemplating morality. (See Gödel.) On matters of life and death, conservatives would do better to rely on their faith in the relative wisdom of individuals and families than in their faith on the ability of government to discern and enforce absolute truths.

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I am struggling to understand the implications of the Schiavo legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Bush very early this morning. The law allows Schiavo's parents to obtain a further review of the case by a federal court. The supporters of this federal action seem to be concerned that there are serious doubts about (i) the severity of Schiavo's condition; and (ii) the appropriateness of the decisions of the Florida state courts. After signing the law, President Bush said,

"In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life."

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said,

"The Florida courts have brought Terri and the nation to an ugly crossroads by commanding medical professionals sworn to protect life to end Terri's life."

A fairly complete chronology of the Schiavo affair can be found here. Included in the timeline is a link to the report of the Guardian Ad Litem (GAL), appointed by special provision of the Florida state legislature to summarize the case for Governor Bush. The report provides clear answers to the key questions. On the question of Thersa Schiavo's condition:

Theresa’s neurological tests and CT scans indicate objective measures of the persistent vegetative state. These data indicate that Theresa’s cerebral cortex is principally liquid, having shrunken due to the severe anoxic trauma experienced thirteen years ago. The initial oxygen deprivation caused damage that could not be repaired, and the brain tissue in that area continued to devolve.

On the question of the integrity of the state court decisions:

A legal analysis of the tens of thousands of pages of documents in the case file, against the statutory legal guidelines and the supporting case law, leads the GAL to conclude that all of the appropriate and proper elements of the law have been followed and met. The law has done its job well. The courts have carefully and diligently adhered to the prescribed civil processes and evidentiary guidelines, and have painfully and diligently applied the required tests in a reasonable, conscientious and professional manner. The disposition of the courts, four times reviewed at the appellate level, and once refused review by the Florida Supreme Court, has been that the trier of fact followed the law, did its job, adhered to the rules and rendered a decision that, while difficult and painful, was supported by the facts, the weight of the evidence and the law of Florida.

In an ironic note, the GAL report has this to say about federal action:

A prevailing legal sentiment is that matters such as those in Theresa’s case are best addressed by states, their legislatures and their courts – rather than by the federal judiciary. Justice Scalia has admonished us to rely upon and accept the role of state lawmakers and laws to address issues of this very nature.

But it is worth remembering that contempt for the authority and integrity of state courts was foretold by Justice Stevens in his powerful dissent in Gore v. Bush:

What must underlie petitioners’ entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

Can it really be that a Republican congress wants to usurp the medical decisionmaking authority, under carefully applied state law, of a husband and legal guardian of a woman whose brain has turned into liquid after 13+ years on life support? What about the sanctity of marriage? What about the principle of federalism? Here is a list of the "exceptional" circumstances in which the Republican commitment to "states' rights" does not apply:

• partial birth abortion
• gay marriage
• medical marijuana
• assisted suicide
• Terri Schiavo

Here is the list of circumstances when it does apply:

• appropriateness of displaying the confederate flag

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who finds the federal action to be appropriate or desirable.

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I found a transcript of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the Texas Commandments Case, Van Orden v. Perry, 03-1500. In his rebuttal (page 55), the attorney for the petitioner offered the best, most concise summary of the questions raised by this case:

First, is the Ten Commandments a highly religious message? And second, can the government place a single religious message on government property at the seat of its government?

Evidently, the defenders of the monument think the answer to the second question is "no", so they try to assert that the answer to the first question is also "no". (As I noted yesterday, this is the part that is most disturbing to me.)

The most enjoyable discovery I made by reading the transcript was that the most strident advocate for an honest answer to the first question ("yes") was none other than Justice Scalia! Here is an exchange (from page 29) with Attorney General Abbott, representing the state of Texas:

GENERAL ABBOTT: [Such monuments] send a secular message to all the people, regardless of whether they are believers or not believers, of the important role the Ten Commandments have played in the development of law.

JUSTICE SCALIA: It's not a secular message. I mean, if you're watering it down to say that the only reason it's okay is it sends nothing but a secular message, I can't agree with you. I think the message it sends is that law is -- and our institutions come from God. And if you don't think it conveys that message, I just think you're kidding yourself.

I totally agree with Justice Scalia here. The "secular message" argument strikes me as an obvious fraud. There wouldn't be protestors outside the court to protect the right to convey a secular, historical message.

What the transcript makes clear is that Scalia wants to answer "yes" to the first question so that he can also answer "yes" to the second question. Here is an excerpt (page 40) beginning when Justice Stevens proposes that Texas follow the lead of a city in Wisconsin in clarifying the secular purpose of the monument:

JUSTICE STEVENS: [T]hey sold the parcel of land that had the [Commandments monument] on it back to the [Fraternal Order of] Eagles and then they put a fence around it and then they put this sign up: "This property is not owned or maintained by the City of Lacrosse, nor does the City endorse the religious expression thereon."...And would [this disclaimer] undermine the message that you legitimately seek to convey?

GENERAL ABBOTT: I don't believe it would.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Why don't you do it and we wouldn't have this case? I really would consider it something of a Pyrrhic victory if you win on the ground that you're arguing. So that in all future cases, we're going to have to examine displays of the Ten Commandments to see whether there was ever any intent to say that our laws are ultimately dependent upon God.

Justice Scalia's primary concern here is not the practical implications--having to evaluate the thousands of Commandments monuments on a "case-by-case basis" as General Abbott advocates--but rather the ideological implications of tacitly answering "no" to the second question.

The most frightening discovery I made in the trascript is how far Justice Scalia's jurisprudence would evidently go in his affirmative answer to the second question. Here is the meat of his position, delivered during an earlier exchange with the petitioner's attorney (page 16):

JUSTICE SCALIA: It is a profound religious message, but it's a profound religious message believed in by the vast majority of the American people, just as belief in monotheism is shared by a vast majority of the American people. And our traditions show that there is nothing wrong with the government reflecting that. I mean, we're a tolerant society religiously, but just as the majority has to be tolerant of minority views in matters of religion, it seems to me the minority has to be tolerant of the majority's ability to express its belief that government comes from God, which is what this is about. As Justice Kennedy said, turn your eyes away if it's such a big deal to you.

Wow! As the petitioner's attorney asks, in his rebuttal (page 56):

Your Honors, what's left of the Establishment Clause if any item can be displayed with the most profound religious contents? Do we then say the observer can just avert his or her eyes?

But Justice Scalia seems to go further than mere displays. Can he really mean that "the minority has to be tolerant of the majority's ability to express its belief" using the instruments of government? Forget prayer in schools--Justice Scalia would seem allow a full-blown communion, with the minority given the freedom not to swallow!?

One final, almost parenthetical, observation. There was a lot of discussion in the Supreme Court about whether the Commandments were presented primarily as a relgious symbol. But there was essentially no consideration of the accuracy of the secular claim--namely, that religious law was an essential element of the foundation of common law. In a letter to Major John Cartwright, on 5 June 1824, Thomas Jefferson decried the assertion

that Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed. But it may amuse you, to shew when, and by what means, they stole this law upon us...

Jefferson proceeds to show that a mis-translation of Latin in 1613, followed by "echoings and re-echoings from one to another" rendered the proposition so firmly established in the mid 1700s that "the court would not suffer it to be debated." He concludes:

What a conspiracy this between Church and State! Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all! Sing Tantarara, rogues all!

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I am keenly interested in the Commandments debate that reached the US Supreme Court yesterday. First, I highly recommend listening to the excellent report from Nina Totenberg from NPR. In her report, I learned that government officials in the Kentucky case initially justified public display of the Commandments to "demonstrate the nation's Christian heritage." More provocative, though, was the announcement by Justice Scalia that he found such displays "entirely appropriate" in light of his view that

[The 10 Commandments] are a symbol that the government derives its authority from God.

This is profoundly ironic, because the Kentucky display was modified, in an effort that Justice Souter described as obvious "litigation window dressing", to include a copy of the Declaration of Independence, which says:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

But the primary source of my objection to government display of the Commandments is not that government is too vigorously endorsing religion--just the opposite! My strongest objection is that these displays tend to secularize what is for me a profoundly important element of faith. The single most important prayer in all of Judaism is called the Shema:

Hear, O Israel: the Lord is God; the Lord is One.

The Supreme Court has already held that such affirmations of monotheism ("one nation under God") are essentially non-religious! If you then argue that the Commandments (and the occasion of their delivery to Moses at Sinai) are also non-religious, you are well on your way to arguing that Judaism isn't a religion at all! I don't especially want to put pressure on government officials to make such arguments!

A fascinating footnote in this whole discussion is the question of how many Commandments there are, after all. It turns out that the 3 major faiths for whom the Commandments have greatest significance--Jews, Protestants, and Catholics--have slightly different numbering schemes. You can see the different versions here. (A Catholic friend of mine argues wryly for the superiority of his version by noting that it is the only one that doesn't group coveting of your neighbor's wife with coveting of the rest of your neighbor's property.)

The history of the displays such as the one in Texas reveals that they evidently tried to avoid the "whose Commandments" problem by using a version that was endorsed by an inter-faith group. But based on a close look at the Texas Monument, using the left-indent as a guide to where a new Commandment begins, I would say they chose the Catholic version! (I had expected that all of these monuments would be the Protestant version.) Closer to home, the plaque outside the Chester County Courthouse in Pennsylvania avoids the problem by having no clear breakpoints in the text at all. Indeed, the plaque title is simply "The Commandments", and it looks to me like there are eleven of them!

One final point of interest is that upwards of 2000 stone Commandments Monuments were erected on public property by the Fraternal Order of Eagles with funding and support from Cecil B. DeMille, as a promotional gimmick for his forthcoming film! Read more about the history here.

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What great day for Iraq, America and the world! Be sure to check out the Iraqi election slide shows at the New York Times and the Washington Post.

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As only he can do, President Bush concisely stated the importance of Iraq's elections:

We in the West believe in Western values. I -- democracy is a progress -- you'll see progress toward a goal. There won't be instant democracy.

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A recent essay in the Economist on inequality in America was reverberating in my mind this weekend. First, the problem:

A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America....The most vivid evidence of social sclerosis comes from politics. A country where every child is supposed to be able to dream of becoming president is beginning to produce a self-perpetuating political elite....There is also growing evidence that America is less socially mobile than many other rich countries....the correlation between the incomes of fathers and sons is higher in the United States than in Germany, Sweden, Finland or Canada....Americans are clearly mistaken if they believe they live in the world's most mobile society.

Now some possible reasons no one talks about a solution:

Members of the American elite live in an intensely competitive universe. As children, they are ferried from piano lessons to ballet lessons to early-reading classes. As adolescents, they cram in as much after-school coaching as possible. As students, they compete to get into the best graduate schools. As young professionals, they burn the midnight oil for their employers. And, as parents, they agonise about getting their children into the best universities. It is hard for such people to imagine that America is anything but a meritocracy: their lives are a perpetual competition. Yet it is a competition among people very much like themselves—the offspring of a tiny slither of society—rather than among the full range of talents that the country has to offer.

Just so I don't seem totally depressed on this MLK holiday, I should note that Virginia's "Jackson-Lee-King" holiday appears to have a more benign origin than I had assumed, and they have now separated King from the others, giving Virginia a nice 4-day weekend!

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From an essay in the latest Economist, some additional facts:

• "Over the coming decades, Social Security's payments will rise much faster than its revenues, which come from payroll taxes. The net present value [how much money you have to have in the bank today] of this financial imbalance over the next 75 years is $3.7 trillion, less than 1% of cumulative GDP. Over an even longer horizon, the present value of the permanent imbalance is estimated at around $10 trillion..." Notice that this $10 trillion looks a lot like the $11 trillion that I understood to be the total dollar value of trust fund redemptions between 2018 and 2042.
• "The financial burden from Medicare will be much bigger (see chart 2 [below]). Mr Bush's first-term decision to introduce a prescription-drug benefit for retirees worsened Medicare's long-term financial imbalance by more than twice as much as the entire Social Security problem."

They also offer some good criticism of some proposals, but I'll save those for my forthcoming essay on how to sort through the rhetoric. For now, here is their simple summary:

Social Security needs fixing. And that means either boosting revenues (for instance, by raising payroll taxes) or reducing promised benefits.

I think it really is that simple. The trick is figuring out what combination of these is actually behind any specific proposal...

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Some more important information about Social Security and the "trust fund":

• The total federal debt (sum of each year's federal deficit) is now 7.6 trillion (T) dollars. This is broken down as follows: $1.7T is held in the SS trust fund; $1.5T is held in other federal trusts; $0.7T is held by the Federal Reserve; and $3.7 is held by private individuals.
• This part is a bit murky, but here is the best I can surmise. The $1.7T now held in the SS trust fund will grow due to interest on the bonds and new deposits (a continuing SS surplus), so that it is expected to be worth about $5T in 2018. After that, it will begin to shrink as the bonds are redeemed to make up the shortfall of revenues, but because it also continues to earn interest, the total redemption between 2018 and 2042 will add up to about $11T!

Now I'm going to do some more reading and thinking about how to sort through all these facts...

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The mass media has completely abdicated their responsibility to present the salient facts in the debate on Social Security. Here is my best effort to dispassionately present what I have been able to learn. My sources are: Ask the White House, National Review, and the Cato Institute. I know--this is not exactly a fair and balanced sampling of sources, but I think the facts are pretty clear:

• Social Security benefits are indexed to the growth in wages, which is generally higher than the rate of growth of cost of living ("inflation"). Therefore, the expected benefit level in 2050 will be 40-percent higher than today's benefit, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
• At present, Social Security collects more in taxes than it pays in benefits. This is the so-called "Social Security Surplus." Over the next 5 years of so, the surplus is expected to rise slightly, peaking at about $100 billion. The surplus will then begin to shrink, becoming a deficit as benefits surpass revenues around 2018. As far as the eye can see past 2018, the currently forecast payouts will exceed tax revenues, and Social Security will run a deficit.
• When Social Security runs a surplus, the money is "invested" in special Treasury bonds, much like the government bonds that private individuals buy. This stockpile of bonds is called the "Social Security Trust Fund." More comments about the "trust fund" are below.
• Beginning in 2018, when tax receipts fall short of what is required to pay benefits, Social Security will begin to redeem the bonds in the Social Security trust fund, in order to get enough cash to pay the promised benefits. The trust fund is expected to cover the shortfall through something like 2042.
• Under current law, when the trust fund is exhausted and there is a shortfall in Social Security tax revenues, the benefits are automatically adjusted downward so that payments equal tax receipts. In other words, when the trust fund is empty, Social Security is by law revenue neutral each year. It is projected that in 2042, when the trust fund runs out, the required benefit cut would be about 27 percent.
• The treasury bonds purchased by the trust fund are used to finance the deficit in the remainder of the federal budget. In other words, the government isn't buying, say, big blocks of gold which might one day be sold in order to pay off the bonds when Social Security begins to redeem them in 2018. Some would argue that this renders the trust fund meaningless. Consider what happens after 2018--in order to "buy back" the bonds from Social Security, the government can either raise taxes, borrow the money from someone else, or "default" on the bonds by not paying the benefits. If there were no trust fund, the options would be the same!

As far as I can tell, these are the important facts about the current situation. I'll have more to say soon about what I think these facts imply about the required and proposed "reform" options....

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[I]n the year 2018, in order to take care of baby boomers...the money going out is going to exceed the money coming in. That's not a good thing. It means that you're either going to have to raise the taxes of people, or reduce the benefits. And the longer you wait, the more severe the pain is going to be to fulfill the promise for a younger generation of workers coming up.

Believe it or not, this simple and accurate statement about Social Security was provided by the president himself, at a special event yesterday. (I highly recommend reading the president's introductory remarks as a demonstration of his considerable political skill: he has a wonderful ability to speak affably, and sound so plainly sensible, while framing an issue in the terms that are profoundly favorable to his policies. It is powerful stuff.) Notice that the president seems to understand that there are only two ways out of this coming crisis:

"You're either going to have to raise the taxes of people, or reduce the benefits."

So, which of these two painful options will the president choose? Neither!

Now, I've talked about this, and I want the people to clearly understand, if you're a senior receiving your Social Security check, nothing is going to change....I said we're not going to run up the payroll taxes. I think we can solve the problem without increasing payroll taxes.

So, what is the solution? No specifics, of course--the president often rebukes reporters asking for specifics by saying that he isn't going to "negotiate with myself." But here is the president's outline:

[A]llow younger workers, on a voluntary basis, to take some of their own money and set it aside in the form of a personal savings account -- a personal savings account which is their own; a personal savings account which would earn a better rate of return than the money -- their money currently held within the Social Security trust; a personal savings account which will compound over time and grow over time.

From here, the details get murky, as the White House transcript doesn't have all the comments of the other speakers at the event. But you get the gist of the concept from some things the president says later:

"[the stock market has an average annual rate of return of] seven and a half percent since 1924....So it's more than double [the return of the Social Security Trust]....I think it's important for people to understand compounding rate of interest. In other words, if you take a dollar, set it aside and it grows at three percent over 30 years or 40 years, and compare that to the same dollar that grows at 7 percent on an average basis over 30 years, there is a huge difference in money."

So, it seems that the president believes that if we act now, we can count on individuals to choose to harness the power of compound interest over the next 13 years to avoid the politically painful measures of either cutting benefits or increasing taxes to keep Social Security solvent.

I'll have more to say soon, but notice how this proposal is quintessential Bush policy: everyone is better off; there is no pain for anyone. The only obstacle is the intransigence of the opponents.

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As if the domestic effects of the "war on drugs" weren't awful enough, Slate has a great essay on how the drug war is systematically undermining the war on terror.

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In a press conference on 4-Nov-2004, President Bush said,

I've earned capital in this election -- and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is -- you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.

I have been thinking about what this should mean, and what it might actually mean.

"Spending political capital" ought to mean that you are going to do something that is politically difficult. A good example would be Clinton's decision to abandon voodoo economics and raise taxes in 1993--a move that Republicans at the time cited as the end of prosperity as we know it and that probably contributed notably to the Democrats' historic losses in 1994. Another good example would be Clinton's strong leadership in the passage of NAFTA, something that still splits the Democrats from their base a decade later.

So, what courageous political actions can we expect from the Bush administration? Judging by history, I'm afraid I would have to guess, "none." Some might argue that the war in Iraq was a demonstration of Bush's willingness to do something that was politically unpopular. This would have been true if, in the run-up to war in late 2002 and early 2003, the president had publicly trotted out the real justification for war--the "transformational power of liberty." Unfortunately, the administration knew that it would not be easy to gather political support for these somewhat ethereal, by Republican standards, reasons for war. So, for "bureaucratic reasons," they focused on Saddam's WMD programs, a threat that existed primarily in the minds of the neocons. I give Bush a little bit of credit for steadfastly refusing, during the campaign, to suggest that there was anything short of clear victory that would bring our troops home from Iraq now, but I think this stance actually played very well, even among most swing voters.

Is there any other endeavor from Bush's first term that can justly be called politically courageous? Massive tax cuts coupled with massive spending increases doesn't sound like very tough love to me.

As I wrote in my Kerry endoresement, reform of federal entitlements and taxation are both very noble goals. But I'm very much afraid that Bush, aided and abetted by the emboldened Republican Congress, won't have nearly the political courage required to do the sort of difficult reforms that move the country in a positive direction.

I hope to write again soon with more details on some of the difficult but very worthwhile reforms that could be attempted, as well as my predictions about the much easier, undesirable, and likely directions I expect the President to go...

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