Intergenerational work.

• Author: Lynch, Michael W.

In which our man in Washington engages Social Security, searches for interns, and contemplates incriminating stains

Subj: Social Security on the Potomac Date: Thu, Jul 30, 1998 3:35 PM EDT From: mlynch@reasondc.org

While much of D.C. and America was focused on Friday's shooting at the Capitol, your humble correspondent and his summer sidekick stuck to our more mundane policy beat Monday. After meeting in the office and fueling up on Au Bon Pain (oh what a pain) Guatemalan-blend coffee, which strives for the burnt taste of Starbucks but, like its price, falls a little shy, and a sourdough (hey, it's not New York) sesame-seed bagel, we hopped in a cab to the FDR Memorial.

We weren't sight-seeing on company time. (One of the advantages of Washington is all the history and Americana one can absorb in the course of a daily routine. I play softball by the Vietnam Memorial; jog past Theodore Roosevelt Island, voted most underappreciated monument by The Weekly Standards editorial staff; and lunch in Lafayette Park across from the White House, where my mind's eye speculates on what actually happens at intern central, and then recoils at the sight.) We were headed to a Save Social Security rally sponsored by the National Council for Senior Citizens, a group which, last I heard, was 96 percent funded by the U.S. government, with the other 4 percent rumored to come from the Kremlin. The world hasn't gone their way of late: They've suffered a 4 percent budget cut.

It's no secret that supporters of the current Social Security system are worried that they got caught flatfooted as right-wing think tanks, a Harvard professor, and their own Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan started to seduce the public with the prospect of actually amassing wealth, rather than promises from government, with investment-based Social Security. Catch-up requires a massive miseducation campaign aimed at captive audiences, meaning editorial boards and union members. We were about to witness an event featuring the latter.

The rally was underway by the time we arrived (the bagel took longer to eat than I expected). I took my last swill of coffee and headed into the center of the crowd with my notebook and tape recorder - the tools of ignorance, as my old man used to call my catcher's gear - ready to record the events. A gray-topped lady appeared to be kicking off the rally. She assured the audience, which was composed of people who didn't need to take vacation days to pursue their political activism, that all the speakers were screened for certain criteria. "They have to know what life was like before Social Security, and they have to have fire in the belly," I think I heard her read rather quietly.

The AFL-CIO's John Sweeney was up next. Now here's a man who cares about Social Security. He cares about it enough to launch directly into class warfare with Jesse Jacksonesque rhyme, if not cadences. The theme of the day, expressed appropriately on just about everyone's head, was "Raise the Cap, Close the Gap," which is an allusion to the fact that Americans pay FICA taxes - yes, Sweeney called them "taxes," not contributions - only on the first $64,000 or so of their income. Privatization, according to Sweeney, is the "greedy few attempting to take from the deserving many." And the greedy few don't confine their malevolent avarice to destroying Social Security, nor does Sweeney confine his rhymes to retirement themes. According to Sweeney, the right wing - which may mean anyone with a nonunion job - wants to "voucherize, privatize, and pauperize education."

I bounced around the crowd, seeking shade, distance from the speaker blaring Sweeney's wisdom, and people to interview. Sweeney's exhortations to action weren't eliciting much passion. Part of the problem was the location. The FDR Memorial, like your humble correspondent's abode, is in Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport's landing path. So every few minutes, Sweeney would stop ranting as the welcome sound of jet engines displaced his wisdom in my ears.

There weren't enough landing clearances, as far as I was concerned, to adequately disrupt the next speaker, introduced to the crowd as the Independent - but known to REASON editors as the socialist - congressman from Vermont: Bernie...