President of the U.S., 1981-1989; Republican Governor (CA)
Wanted to privatize retirement, but never had opportunity
Social Security was always more tar baby than Teflon for Reagan. He told me when he was governor of California that Barry Goldwater’s campaign had demonstrated that Republicans could not safely discuss the issue, but Reagan could not stop talking about
it. I have no doubt that he shared the view that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme. He was intrigued with the idea of a voluntary plan that would have allowed workers to make their own investments. This idea would have undermined the system by depriving
Social Security of the contributions of millions of the nation’s highest-paid workers. In 1976 he said that Social Security “could have made a provision for those who could do better on their own” and suggested that such recipients be allowed to
leave the program upon showing that “they had made provisions for their non-earning years.” This declaration sent shudders through the ranks of Reagan’s political advisers, who knew his true feelings about Social Security.“
Suggested in 1975 to make social security voluntary
In 1975, Reagan suggested ways to make social security voluntary. The demography of Florida made that as dangerous a position as Reagan could adopt on domestic matters. [Based on that issue],
Ford beat Reagan [in the Florida primary in 1976] with 53% of the general vote, but with a crushing 60% of voters over sixty-five.
Source: Reagan’s America, by Garry Wills, p. 329
Jul 2, 1987
Failed at restructuring system to avoid bankruptcy
Reagan’s speech before Congress-a call for 100% support of his Program for Economic Recovery-was interrupted by 14 bursts of applause and three standing ovations. 63 Democrats subsequently joined the solid Republican minority. Speaker Tip O’Neill
[concluded] “the will of the people is to go along with the President.”
[After its passage], the Administration, overconfident, tried to restructure Social Security-which was clearly spending itself into bankruptcy-and discovered within days that “the
will of the people“ did not extend so far as to mandate cutting the benefits of retirees.
Keynesian economic theory, codified by the social engineers of the 60s and 70s, called for high, progressive tax rates, manipulative government spending, and
welfare-state ”entitlements“ centering around Social Security & Medicare/Medicaid. Reaganomics questioned the wisdom of all these tenets, with the exception of Social Security, by now clearly too much of an article of American faith even to be debated.
