Retirement wrangle.

• Author: Henderson, Rick
• Position: Washington

A bipartisan commission tackles an old-age problem.

"THE [RETIREMENT] date of 65 was set in 1937 because that was your life expectancy," says Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) of the Social Security program. "They hoped you'd die at 65 and then there really wouldn't be a lot of payout. Now a person retires at 65, or 70, and [you] have a life expectancy of 10, 11, 13 years--women [longer] than men--and that can't work."

Social Security's long-term insolvency is only one issue Simpson and the 31 other members of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform are confronting. In December, the commission will recommend changes in the tax structure and in "entitlements," the automatic-spending programs that support retirees, the poor, and farmers, among others.

Such automatic spending is exploding. In 1963, nearly three-fourths of federal spending was discretionary, spent on such items as national defense, roads, and space exploration. By contrast, nearly half the 1993 federal budget consisted of spending on the four big entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and federal pensions--plus interest on the debt. In another 10 years, more than 70 percent of the budget will be on automatic pilot.

Heading the commission is Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), who refused to vote for President Clinton's 1993 budget unless the president promised to establish this commission. Although Kerrey made national health insurance the centerpiece of his 1992 presidential campaign, he has since become a trenchant critic of rampant entitlement spending, including any new health-care entitlement. And he hasn't ruled out another run at the White House; a September 1 Associated Press story reported that a prominent Democratic donor had approached Kerrey about challenging Clinton in 1996. If the commission is considered a success, it could fuel Kerrey's larger ambitions.

The commission's ideological mix includes Washington power-broker Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), federal-spending critic Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), welfare-statist Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and iconoclast Simpson.

Ideally, the commission will make specific proposals for President Clinton to incorporate into his fiscal 1996 budget proposal. But a deep division in the commission between tax raisers and benefit cutters, combined with the political explosiveness of both approaches, suggests that the commission's main role will be educational, not...