Call out the fifes, sound the bugles, strike on the drums. With the State of the Union behind us, the Battle for Social Security now officially begins--again. The President's cynical distortions are fully engaged--"crisis" and "bankruptcy" having replaced "weapons of mass destruction" in his fearmongering rhetoric. The right-wing propaganda machine assumes relentless repetition of the big lies will carry the day this time. But we doubt it. Those of us who understand the true condition of Social Security--and why Republicans wish to dismantle this essential and durable system of social insurance--are fairly confident that truth can prevail. It helps that a coalition of progressive groups are making Social Security their top priority and that most major news organizations (the same ones Bush snookered on Iraq) have belatedly discovered the President's factual manipulations on Social Security (it would be disrespectful to call them lies). In any case, until this fight is won, no one can back away.

Bush's cruelest distortion lies in forcing the political system to confront the wrong problem. The crisis is not Social Security. It is retirement security in general--Medicare most obviously, but also the medley of employee pension plans shrinking in value and the collapsed private savings of American households. All three are far more imperiled than Social Security, with its relatively minor and distant problems. All three will require densely complicated policy solutions and deep shifts in economic thinking.

Social Security, it is important to remember, is the bedrock guarantee that keeps millions of elderly people from destitution in their old age--the basic floor people can build on, not a ticket to golden-age affluence. Social Security is the only income for one-fifth of retirees, and it is the principal source of income for two out of three retired Americans. When the other pillars of retirement security are weakening, it is especially irresponsible to tamper with it.

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