Resistance Seen Easing to Social Security Cuts : Congressmen Now Willing to Advocate Changes; Elderly Said to Recognize Need for Reductions

Although Sen. Steven D. Symms (R-Ida.) is facing reelection in 1986, he voted last week in favor of trimming Social Security--ignoring the standard political wisdom that anyone who tampers with those benefits will feel the wrath of elderly voters.

Moreover, Symms said, he voted for the proposal without fear of retribution, assured by senior citizens during 46 town meetings in Idaho that they are willing to accept smaller benefits, if necessary, to reduce the huge federal budget deficit.

“It is almost unanimous from the senior citizens--maybe not with the special interest lobbyists who represent them here in Washington, but out in real America there certainly is a broad cross section of overwhelming support for budget containment,” he said.

Issue Once Sacrosanct

Symms’ decision reflects a new willingness in Congress to tackle an issue that once was considered politically sacrosanct.

The new mood may not translate immediately into restraints on benefits. Symms was in the minority Wednesday when the Senate voted, 65 to 34, against a proposal to limit the annual cost-of-living increase to about two percentage points less than inflation for each of the next three years.

But there has been an unmistakable trend since 1981, when President Reagan proposed trimming benefits and the Senate promptly voted 96 to 0 against any tampering with the program. In the last four years, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said, 66 senators have gone on record in favor of at least one of the many subsequent proposals to trim cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients. Like Symms, eight other senators seeking reelection next year took the chance last week of voting for cuts.

And some observers are beginning to sense a shift in public opinion outside Washington as well. They question whether Social Security will be as important a campaign issue in the 1986 elections as it was in 1982, when dozens of defeated Republicans blamed Reagan’s proposed changes in the program for contributing to their losses.

Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), the Senate’s assistant majority leader, said an increasing number of Americans have grown skeptical of efforts by lobbyists for the elderly to portray Social Security recipients as on the brink of poverty.

“How did we get to the point in America where somehow everybody over 65 is eating out of a garbage can?” he asked. “That is absurd.”

Simpson said that he noticed a change in public opinion during his 1984 reelection campaign, when he warned groups representing the elderly that Congress might be forced to trim the cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits this year.

Quiet in Back of Room

“Instead of a great sucking noise in the back of the room, there would be quiet,” he said. “Four years ago, they used to say: ‘No, you can’t tamper with this!’ ”

Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento) has noticed the same phenomenon. “Senior citizens are as ready as any element of society to sacrifice,” he said. “If there were some effort made to galvanize them, I think they would be willing to make a sacrifice in the context of a total approach to budget savings.”

In addition, members of Congress increasingly are hearing from younger voters who resent the recent payroll tax increases that have helped keep the Social Security system afloat and fear that the program will not be as generous to them when they reach retirement age.

“There’s hostility there,” Simpson said. “When you talk to young people, they say: ‘I can’t believe what they are taking out of my check and I can’t believe that old coot down the road is getting $422 a month and he told me he never started work until he was 59 years old and then worked only three or four years.’ When you’re 25 years old, that’s a snowmobile or a down payment on a dune buggy. You’re not thinking about Sun City.”

Younger Voters Hostile

Paul Hewitt, founder of Americans for Generational Equity, a new organization designed to represent the interests of younger voters, said that their hostility stems from a 19% decline in income after inflation and after taxes for workers between the ages of 25 and 34 over the last decade--more than one-third of it because of the increase in Social Security taxes.

Hewitt predicted that young persons ultimately will win sweeping changes in the Social Security system. “I’m sure we’re heading toward full taxation of Social Security benefits,” he said. Starting in 1984, income taxes have been levied on half of the benefits of couples with incomes greater than $32,500 and individuals above $25,000.

However, politicians willing to encroach on Social Security benefits remain in the minority. Democrats in Congress, insisting that Reagan has backed down on a promise he made during his 1984 reelection campaign not to reduce benefits for the elderly, intend to take a party position against any cuts this year.

“The President has given a commitment that it’s not going to be cut, and the people are relying on him,” said Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.), who, at age 84, is recognized as the leading congressional spokesman for the elderly.

And, despite rumblings of public support for restraints on Social Security benefits, polls consistently show that a majority of Americans remains opposed to the idea. Such lobbying groups as the American Assn. of Retired Persons and the Gray Panthers are fighting as hard as ever to protect benefits.

In the lobbying before Wednesday’s Senate vote, an officer of the retired persons’ association said: “The only thing that wasn’t done (by senior citizens’ groups) was that no one rented the Goodyear blimp.”

Lee Atwater, a political consultant who worked in the White House during the 1981 flap over Reagan’s proposed changes in the program, insisted that Reagan and the Senate Republican leadership once again have set out on a “perilous” political course by advocating limiting Social Security benefits.

“Anybody who plays with it is going to get their fingers blown off,” Atwater said. “Just talking about Social Security is something you do at your own risk. The single most salient issue in American politics today--the biggest sacred cow--is Social Security.”

As proof, Atwater cites the controversy stirred by Democratic National Chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. on April 17, when he suggested that his party should consider eliminating Social Security benefits for persons “who have no real need for them.” Kirk quickly backed away from his remark when it set off a firestorm among members of his own party in Congress.

But Hewitt, a Republican, sees Kirk’s remarks as evidence that cuts in Social Security benefits are gaining political momentum as both the Democrats and Republicans seek to appeal to younger voters. “That’s why Kirk blurted it out,” he said.

President ‘Courageous’

He added: “The President has been courageous for violating what has been the standard political wisdom. I think Reagan is banking on the older generation to understand the need for deficit reduction. The Republicans have concluded that the risks pretty well even themselves out.”

Hewitt said that House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) “may be leading the Democratic Party down the road to disaffecting younger voters.”

Republicans are also quick to point out that, despite the official Democratic position, a number of Democrats have advocated limiting Social Security benefits. Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) has been a longtime proponent of an across-the-board budget freeze, including Social Security, and Rep. Jim Moody (D-Wis.), an economist, recently spoke out in favor of taxing all the benefits of recipients whose incomes exceed $33,000 a year.

“The time has come to recognize that, for future generations, a modified Social Security system is preferable to no Social Security system at all,” Moody said. “By declaring all aspects of the current Social Security system as absolutely undiscussable and unchangeable, we are in effect reducing the money available to others in need.”

Moody argues that, unless the Social Security payroll tax, now 7.05%, is eventually increased beyond 20%, the Social Security trust fund ultimately will be able to pay retired persons less than 70 cents during retirement for every dollar they contributed in taxes during their working life. Today’s recipients are receiving an average of $3 for every $1 they contributed in taxes, and Moody believes that high-income recipients should be forced to forgo their benefits.

Like Symms, Moody contends that senior citizens in his district, although upset at first, came to accept his view. “We’re getting a great deal of support now from Social Security recipients as well as younger taxpayers,” an aide said.

Even officers of the American Assn. of Retired Persons acknowledge a shift in the Social Security debate.

Congress shot down Reagan’s proposed cuts in 1981 because they were presented as “a free-standing issue,” said Martin Corry, a lobbyist for the association. Even to the elderly, he said, the changes being discussed now are more acceptable because they are being portrayed as necessary for deficit reduction.

“People want to see something done on the deficit, including our membership,” he said.

But Corry insisted that Social Security has not lost the support of the younger generation, many of whom recognize that, without it, they would be called on to support older members of their families. “There are a couple of people out there who are trying to drive a wedge between young people and their parents and grandparents,” he said.

As a result, the retired persons’ association has taken the position that it might support a reduction in cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients as part of a deficit reduction package requiring all sectors of society to sacrifice equally.

But the association continues to resist attempts to tax benefits more heavily or to deny benefits to the elderly with higher incomes, on grounds that such changes would convert Social Security from an insurance program to a welfare program and undermine its support among today’s workers. Corry said that Congress set a “dangerous precedent” when it agreed in 1983 to tax half of the benefits of higher-income recipients.

Although recognizing those political cross-currents, some experts are withholding judgment for now. Republican pollster Robert Teeter recently began a survey that he hopes will determine whether public opinion toward Social Security is changing.

“I don’t know whether it is true or not,” he said. “It has been a very sensitive issue. At the same time, I have seen other issues like this in which the public has been conditioned to the necessity for change.”