Attn Beck: Bush's "'Leninist' Strategy" for Social Security Reform

2005: LA Times cited 1983 CATO Journal article as "the groundwork" for Bush's Social Security reform push

Back in 1997, proponents of overhauling Social Security met with the man who would become their most powerful convert: Texas Gov. George W. Bush, whose presidential ambitions were beginning to gel.

The governor dined with Jose Piñera, architect of Chile's 1981 shift from government pensions to worker-owned retirement accounts, in a meeting that helped bring Bush a big step closer to embracing a similar plan for Social Security in his emerging presidential platform.

"I think he wanted to support the idea but needed to be convinced," said Edward H. Crane, president of the libertarian Cato Institute, who was at the dinner. "I really think Jose convinced him."

This week, President Bush's plan to allow younger workers to divert Social Security taxes into personal investment accounts will be a centerpiece of his State of the Union address and a barnstorming tour of the country. It is a tough sell to an uncertain public, but Bush has a secret weapon: A generation of free-market conservatives like Crane and Piñera has been laying the groundwork for this debate.

"It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible," wrote Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, Heritage Foundation analysts, in a 1983 article in the Cato Journal. "But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform."

Now, Bush is drawing on a deep reservoir of resources - including policy research, ready-to-hire experts and polling on how to discuss the issue - that conservatives have created over the last 20 years.

Heritage Foundation scholars Butler and Germanis' article headlined "Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy."

In their 1983 article, Butler and Germanis write:

As we contemplate basic reform of the Social Security system, we would do well to draw a few lessons from the Leninist strategy. Many critics of the present system believe, as Marx and Lenin did of capitalism, that the system's days are numbered because of its contradictory objectives or attempting to provide both welfare and insurance. All that really needs to be done, they contend, is to point out these inherent flaws to the taxpayers and to show them that Social Security would be vastly improved if it were restructure into a predominantly private system. Convinced by the undeniable facts and logic, individuals supposedly would then rise up and demand that their representatives make the appropriate reforms.

Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation experts frequently appear on Beck's show.

According to a Nexis search, Cato and Heritage experts have appeared on Beck's show at least seven times apiece in the last six months. Beck is hosting people that work for organizations that employed or published people who called for the use of a Leninist strategy. That's only five degrees of separation between Beck and Lenin!