I had campaigned on this issue twice, and the problem was only going to get worse. By solving it, we would do the country a great service. And ultimately, good policy makes for good politics.
“If you lead, we’ll be behind you,” one House leader said, “but we’ll be way behind you.”
The meeting with congressional Republicans showed what an uphill climb I had on Social Security. I decided to press ahead anyway. When I looked back on my presidency, I didn’t want to say I had dodged a big issue.
“Social Security was a great moral success of the twentieth century, and we must honor its great purposes in this new century,” I said in my 2005 State of the Union address. “The system, however, on its current path, is headed toward bankruptcy. And so we must join together to strengthen and save Social Security.”
With Mother campaigning for Social Secuirty reform.
The next day, I embarked on a series of trips to raise awareness about Social Security’s problems and rally the American people to insist on change. I gave speeches, convened town halls, and even held an event with my favorite Social Security beneficiary, Mother. “I’m here because I’m worried about our seventeen grandchildren, and so is my husband,” she said. “They will get no Social Security.”
One of my most memorable trips was to a Nissan auto-manufacturing plant in Canton, Mississippi. Many in the audience were African American workers. I asked how many had money invested in a 401(k). Almost every hand in the room shot up. I loved the idea of people who had not traditionally owned assets having a nest egg they could call their own. I also thought about how much more was possible. Social Security was especially unfair to African Americans. Because their life expectancy was shorter, black workers who spent a lifetime paying into Social Security received an average of $21,000 less in benefits than whites of comparable income levels. Personal accounts, which could be passed along to the next generation, would go a long way toward reducing that disparity.
On April 28, I called a primetime press conference to lay out a specific proposal. The plan I embraced was the brainchild of a Democrat, Robert Pozen. His proposal, known as progressive indexing, set benefits to grow fastest for the poorest Americans and slowest for the wealthiest. There would be a sliding scale for everyone in between. By changing the benefit growth formula, the plan would wipe out the vast majority of the Social Security shortfall. In addition, all Americans would have the opportunity to earn higher returns through personal retirement accounts.
I hoped both sides would embrace the proposal. Republicans would be pleased that we could vastly improve the budget outlook without raising taxes. Democrats should have been pleased by a reform that saved Social Security, the crown jewel of the New Deal, by offering the greatest benefits to the poor, minorities, and the working class—the constituents they claimed to represent.
My legislative team***** pushed the plan hard, but it received virtually no support. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate alleged I wanted to “privatize” Social Security. That was obviously poll-tested language designed to scare people. It wasn’t true. My plan saved Social Security, modernized Social Security, and gave Americans the opportunity to own a piece of their Social Security. It did not privatize Social Security. I sensed there was something broader behind the Democrats’ opposition. National Economic Council Director Al Hubbard told me about a meeting he’d had on Capitol Hill. “I’d like to be helpful on this,” one senior Democratic senator told him, “but our leaders have made clear we’re not supposed to cooperate.”
The rigid Democratic opposition on Social Security came in stark contrast to the bipartisanship I had been able to forge on No Child Left Behind and during my years in Texas. I was disappointed by the change, and I’ve often thought about why it occurred. I think there were some on the other side of the aisle who never got over the 2000 election and were determined not to cooperate with me. Others resented that I had campaigned against Democratic incumbents in 2002 and 2004, helping Republican candidates unseat Democratic icons like Senator Max Cleland of Georgia and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
No doubt I bear some of the responsibility as well. I don’t regret campaigning for fellow Republicans. I had always made clear that I intended to increase our party’s strength in Washington. While I was willing to fine-tune legislation in response to Democratic concerns, I would not compromise my principles, which was what some seemed to expect in return for cooperation. On Social Security, I may have misread the electoral mandate by pushing for an issue on which there had been little bipartisan agreement in the first place. Whatever the cause, the breakdown in bipartisanship was bad for my administration and bad for the country, too.
With no Democrats on board, I needed strong Republican backing to get a Social Security bill through Congress. I didn’t have it. Many younger Republicans, such as Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, supported reform. But few in Congress were willing to address such a contentious issue.
The collapse of Social Security reform is one of the greatest disappointments of my presidency. Despite our efforts, the government ended up doing exactly what I had warned against: We kicked the problem down the road to the next generation. In retrospect, I’m not sure what I could have done differently.
I made the case for reform as widely and persuasively as I could. I tried hard to reach across the aisle and made a Democratic economist’s proposal the crux of my plan. The failure of Social Security reform shows the limits of the president’s power. If Congress is determined not to act, there is only so much a president can do.
Inaction had a cost. In the five years since I proposed reform, the Social Security crisis has grown more acute. The projected bankruptcy date has moved from 2042 to 2037. The shortfall in Social Security—the cost of fixing the problem—has grown more than $2 trillion since I raised the issue in 2005. That is more than we spent on the war in Iraq, Medicare modernization, and the Troubled Asset Relief Program combined. For anyone concerned about the deficits facing future generations, the failure to reform Social Security ranks among the most expensive missed opportunities of modern times.
She was standing on the doorstep, alone in the rain. She looked tired and scared. A few days earlier, Paula Rendon had said goodbye to her family in Mexico and boarded a bus bound for Houston. She arrived with no money and no friends. All she had was an address, 5525 Briar Drive, and the names of her new employers, George and Barbara Bush.
I was thirteen years old when I opened the door that evening in 1959. Before long, Paula became like a second mother to my younger brothers and sister and me. She worked hard, taking care of our family in Texas and her own in Mexico. Eventually she bought a home and moved her family to Houston. She always says the proudest day of her life came when she saw her grandson graduate from college. As governor and president, I had Paula in mind when I spoke about immigration reform. “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” I said.
Like Paula, most who left Mexico for the United States came to put food on the table for their families. Many worked backbreaking jobs, picking crops in the field or laying tar on roofs under the Texas sun. Some, like Paula, received permanent work visas. Others came as temporary workers through the Bracero Program. Some crossed the border illegally.
Over the next four decades, the size of America’s economy expanded from under $3 trillion to more than $10 trillion. The need for workers skyrocketed. Yet immigration and employment laws were slow to change. The Bracero Program expired in 1964 and was not replaced. The supply of permanent work visas did not rise anywhere near as fast as the demand for labor. With no practical way to enter the country lawfully, increasing numbers of immigrants came illegally.
An underground industry of document forgers and smugglers, known as coyotes, sprang up along the border. They stuffed people in the trunks of cars or left them to walk miles across the searing desert. The number of deaths was appalling. Yet immigrants, many of them determined to feed their families, kept coming.
By the time I ran for president, illegal immigration was a serious problem and getting worse. Our economy needed workers, but our laws were being undermined and human rights were being violated. In my 2000 campaign, I decided to take on the issue. I was confident we could find a rational solution that served our national interests and upheld our values.
My first partner on immigration reform was President Vicente Fox of Mexico. Vicente and his wife, Marta, were our guests at the first state dinner Laura and I held, on September 5, 2001. I discussed the possibility of creating a temporary worker program that would allow Mexicans to enter the United States lawfully to work a specific job for a fixed period of time. Vicente supported the idea, but he wanted more. He hoped America would legalize all Mexicans in the United States, a policy he called regularization. I made clear that would not happen. I believed amnesty—making illegal immigrants automatic citizens—would undercut the rule of law and encourage
