The Polarizing Nature of Crossing the Aisle

Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL)

I occasionally find myself in a pickle.  I am both what I like to consider a pretty reasonable person, trying to see both sides of every argument, as well as someone who is extremely partisan, almost never straying off from supporting the Democrat in a race, even if I try to be very even-handed in how I predict and analyze elections (trust me-Democrats annoy me just as often as Republicans, even if I agree with them 99% more than the latter).  However, I have had an instance in recent days where I found myself siding with Republicans, and I have to admit that while it's not changing my voting patterns, it does make me look at the oddities of Washington and how we form political opinions.

This instant was the recent revelation by Jeb Bush regarding Social Security, and how he wants to employ a phased approach where Social Security should raise the age of when Americans should be able to collect full benefits, moving this up from 65 to 68 or to eventually 70.  This is something that the left would vilify him for as a general rule-touching the Holy Grail of Social Security is something that they loathe doing, and that they use as a wedge issue in hopes of gaining support amongst older voters.  However, the reality is that the life expectancy rate in this country has not gone up with the Social Security age.  Someone years ago pointed out that they probably should have kept the Social Security age the same as the life expectancy age of an average man, but that clearly didn't happen, and we're at a point where we simply cannot afford Social Security in the same ways we do now without some sort of reform.

Bush was pretty darn even-handed in his delivery, also indicating that he thinks that means testing (where wealthier citizens wouldn't get to receive Social Security) could couple this age increase, and that these two combined would be able to help solve the Social Security crisis.  While I don't have the exact math on how much this would fix the potential looming deficit to government-funded retirement benefits (and I would like to see a raise in the Social Security cap to help replenish this or potentially Medicare), this seems perfectly reasonable.  The reality is that the expectations by Baby Boomers in the United States regarding their retirement are too high, and something governments are going to have to admit they made mistakes regarding.  Pension funds and using pensions to pay for retirements are something that we are learning is no longer sustainable.  States like New Jersey won't be able to fund pensions in ten years without significant depletion of the state's annual budget.  As a result of this, states (and the Courts, where needed) need to start getting real about upcoming retirees and start incentivizing lump sum payments to younger employees to get them onto non-state run payment plans (like 401ks and Roth IRA's) and to force people to keep working longer in order to earn their full pension benefits.

This sounds dangerously close to privatizing social security, which I am not at the point of wanting to do (I think it's too risky and it puts too much pressure on public money to turn a profit), but I do think that the Democrats and Americans in general need to start to rethink their retirement plans, because living off of social security and pensions isn't sustainable.  I frequently get into arguments with my grandmother regarding some of her friends, whom she said saved no money and what would they have done without social security, and she's right-they would have been lost, but the reality is that most of them probably retired too soon.  Retiring in your fifties should not be a government or even pension-funded option.  If you are retiring with potentially 30-40 years left of your life (which is a LONG time), you need to be doing it with money that you set aside in your own investments.  The government should subsidize a retirement, but they shouldn't be funding it entirely.  And in this way I agree with Jeb Bush-we don't want to get to a situation with Social Security like we have with New Jersey pensions, where we can no longer fund it for ANYONE because we were unwilling to force a select number of people to compromise by a few years.

It's also one of those issues where the Democrats aren't looking ahead on the problem, which is something we frequently hear them (rightfully) accuse the GOP of with climate change and gay marriage legislation.  The reality is that Social Security is something that a large swath of voters count on and desperately need, and I don't think it's fair to change the game on someone who is, say, 80 or even 64, but staggering out the age when you can receive benefits more than we already are currently doing is something that needs to be on the table.  Conversely, though, we need to do a better job of incentivizing young people to put away more for a retirement, considering the rate of returns are so great when they are younger.  The myRA program created by President Obama is a good start, but it's not enough.  Tying corporate tax breaks to matching funds in retirement accounts, having a basic course in retirement savings for high school students (Real World Economics is something I think desperately needs to be taught in high school), automatically registering workers for an IRA when they start a job, and especially tying individual tax credits to whether or not someone has put aside 5% or more in their retirement account.

Some of these are Republican ideas, some of these are Democratic ideas, but all of them seem to make sense on-paper.  The reality is that retirement, like so many issues, is an area where common ground could be struck pretty easily, which is one of the most disappointing things about today's Washington.  Jeb Bush has a good idea that I, a Democrat, agree with, but that would be political suicide for me to say if I were a senator or a congressman on the left.  Look at Rep. Ami Bera, who is being attacked mercilessly by the AFL-CIO for his support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  When a longtime ally of the Democrats starts claiming they don't even care if an incumbent Democrat loses to a Republican, I begin to question their logic and immediately become dismissive of their plight.  The reality is that trade, like government retirement programs, needs to change.  We live in a global economy whether or not Labor wants to acknowledge it, and they need to try and work within that framework.  Try lobbying for minimum wage increases, safer working conditions, and making sure that outsourcing isn't hurting the company's overall American employee count, but standing in the way of greater economic progress, you need something more than a "they took our jobs" argument.  But Bera may well lose his House seat, a crucial one for the Democrats if they hope to take back the House, as a result of the AFL-CIO going after him, who is generally an ally of their cause but just not here, instead of the dozens of Republicans from moderate districts who side with them on virtually nothing.

This just illustrates the larger point of how politics has gotten too narrow.  Siding with the other side, unless you are highly-insulated like Susan Collins or Joe Manchin, is something unforgivable today, which is why progress has become so stagnant.  I agree with Jeb Bush on this issue.  That doesn't make me a Republican and it certainly doesn't mean I'm going to vote for him, but it does mean that if he wins, I'd be able to work with him to get this accomplished.