A Question for Gingrich: What Was The Plan To Reform Social Security and Medicare?

A friend of mine recently gave me a copy of a book about Gingrich and Clinton in preparation for Newt Gingrich's visit to Scripps College. The book is titled, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined A Generation, and finds, among other fascinating things, that in 1997, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich had formed a political alliance to marshal reform of Social Security and Medicare, but were derailed due to the philandering of Bill Clinton.

The author of the book, Steven M. Gillon, has written a summary of his book here and for those that are interested, there's an audio interview with him and John J. Miller of National Review's Between the Covers, accessible here.

In any event, here's the takeaway from the efforts to reform Social Security, from Gillon's review:

The actuarial steps needed to shore up Social Security and Medicare were straightforward and, with government coffers beginning at last to overflow with revenue, easier to achieve than at any time in the recent past. “We always knew that finding common ground on Social Security wasn’t terribly difficult from a policy standpoint,” reflected Bruce Reed, the president’s chief domestic policy advisor. “The policy differences were always the easiest to bridge.” There was a growing consensus on both sides of the aisle in favor of having Social Security tap into the stock market to increase the rate of return on retirement funds. However, difficult questions remained unanswered: Who would manage the money, individuals or the government? Would private accounts replace checks guaranteed by the government, or would they simply be an add-on to the existing system? Politics, not economics, presented the biggest obstacle. Any long-term solution to solving Social Security required increasing the age of eligibility and changing the formula used to calculate the annual cost of living increase (COLA)—two steps guaranteed to arouse powerful opposition from across the political spectrum.

Social Security will most likely go bankrupt in the next thirty years, if not sooner, and our generation will be left with the pieces after having paid into that generational Ponzi Scheme. It is not too late to reform this beast before too long. Republicans would do well to use this issue to get the youth vote, increasingly dissatisfied with Barack Obama.

Chuck DeVore Versus Tom Campbell on Israel

If the Republicans are hoping to defeat Barbara Boxer this year, they'll have to appeal to a constituency that historically has voted Democrat in the past few elections: Jewish Americans. Chuck DeVore is the only Republican running who can appeal to Jewish Americans. DeVore, as I reported here, was one of the first American politicians to categorically support Israel's right to self defense. I think that this continued support will pay large dividends for him as he goes from the primary to Barbara Boxer.

It's not a real secret that Obama's approval among Jewish Americans is high. According to Gallup in September 2009, Jewish Americans support for Obama hovers around 64%, much higher than with the general population, where it was touching 52%. Only atheists do as well as Jews with Obama.

But perhaps Jewish Americans are starting to worry that the Obama administration does not have their best interests at heart. In January 2009, Obama had 83 percent approval with Jewish Americans.

And worry they ought to. The Obama administration just signed a serious arms deal with much of the Arab world, justifying such arms deals as a means of containing Iran. Until June 2009, the U.S. had been rejecting Egyptian requests to buy weapons, given their rather abysmal human rights policy, but all that has changed under Obama. Small wonder then, that Gallup finds this result among Israelis:

A recent poll of Jews in Israel, sponsored by the Jerusalem Post, found only 4% believing Obama's policies are "pro-Israel" and 35% calling them evenly balanced, while 51% said they are "pro-Palestinian." By contrast, a previous survey found 88% of Israelis believing George W. Bush's policies were "pro-Israel."

You'd think that someone like Tom Campbell would align himself with Israel, given its support for the very kinds of toleration that Campbell supports, but that'd be a wrongheaded conclusion. Campbell has an Israel problem, according to The American Spectator in May 2000.

Campbell also is courting trouble with his call to speed up the end of economic aid to Israel--hundreds of millions of dollars a year that is supposed to diminish to zero in the next decade. The candidate argues that a country of Western wealth hardly qualifies for this handout and that he is not against the bigger military assistance package. But to some number of Jews (and other partisans of Israel) this seemingly sensible stance is code. Campbell's pre-primary donation disclosure statement is full of Arabic names, from Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the U.S. Understandably, such citizens want a senator more even-handed on the Middle East. (Campbell also favors an end to economic sanctions on Iraq that he says--again, persuasively--are simply punishing innocents and not Saddam Hussein.) Yet at least a few Israel backers say they smell a "McCloskey problem," referring to the old Nixon antiwar foe's drift into outspoken criticism of Israel.

Arnold Steinberg, a conservative political consultant who was allied with Campbell on the Prop. 209 quota repeal and toyed with aiding him this time, finds his voting record "conspicuously hostile to Israel," but also cites other policy affronts. He concludes, "Republicans will vote for him without spirit. There is no reason for Democrats to vote for him. He has put himself on auto-pilot to lose. What a waste."