Means-Testing Social Security

Earlier this week, Ross Douthat suggested, in The New York Times, that a new Republican agenda could include means-testing Social Security and Medicare. The Wall Street Journal mentioned the same idea in an editorial on December 29, 2009, though, not surprisingly, they did not mention it in a favorable way.

One concern about means-testing Social Security: If you means-test Social Security, so that people with more money would get lower payments than they would have otherwise received, or maybe no payments at all, even though they paid into Social Security every year while they were working, haven’t you destroyed the universal nature of Social Security – and of the taxes that are paid to support it.

If you means-test Social Security, aren’t you changing Social Security, and the tax monies that support it, into nothing more than just another welfare program – and thus undermining the social consensus that supports Social Security?

Inflation-adjusted increases in Social Security over the last 35 years have helped protect our senior citizens from poverty once they stop working. Those increases were possible because of the consensus supporting Social Security. There never has been this kind of support for programs to aid poorer Americans, and money paid out under those programs has decreased, in inflation-adjusted terms (except for medical care expenses), over the years. (Here and here.) If Social Security becomes just another welfare program, would the same thing happen to it?

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Update (1/8/10 12:08 pm): Added links in the last paragraph.  Also, added the parenthetical to the third sentence in the last paragaph.