It’S A Transgeneration Responsibility

President Clinton promised to take us into the 21st century and he almost did before his speech ended. After 80 minutes of Clintonian visions for the future beyond the impeachment vote, I’m tired of the 21st century and want to move on to the 22nd.

Clinton said our generation has to live up to its historic responsibility to the 21st century. That made me a bit queasy. This was a guy who weaseled out of some of his historic responsibilities in the 20th century.

Serve or refuse the draft. Honor promises to reform health care and expand gay rights. Don’t mess around with interns while a special prosecutor is looking through keyholes.

I call those historic responsibilities.

Now, Clinton wants us to construct global financial systems for the 21st century, a Social Security system for the 21st century and name towns as “nationally recognized Millennium Communities.” It sounds like a cult that wears Nikes.

The centerpiece of Clinton’s state of the Union address was designed to really get Republicans’ goats. It was his proposal to put most of the budget surplus for the next 15 years into Social Security, rather than give Americans a tax cut, which tends to favor the rich.

“Social Security is a program in which the rich help the poor, and they don’t like that idea,” said my father, when I called to ask him about Social Security, which he receives and I pay for.

“The Republicans have tried to get back (at Democrats) over Nixon,” he said. “Now, they’re trying to get back over Roosevelt.”

I had called my folks to get a little more perspective on the 20th century. My mom and dad were in junior high school in 1935, when Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security Act was passed, and it was controversial then.

“Your grandfather Morse was a great Republican and didn’t like Franklin Roosevelt,” said my mother. “But when he retired, he changed his mind. He said, `This Social Security isn’t a bad idea.”’

“His business didn’t do much for his retirement,” said my dad.

My father is a hard-core Massachusetts Democrat but he’s bipartisan in his worries about Social Security.

Clinton proposed putting one-seventh of Social Security funds into the stock market. Republicans have proposed giving money earmarked for Social Security directly to workers to invest.

My dad hates both ideas.

“I just wish they’d leave Social Security alone,” he said. “They’re going to let little old ladies be robbed by Wall Street. There’s going to be a stockbroker on every corner.”

He has a point. We who are getting older will be getting a lot of cold calls from sleazy brokers trying to sell us a lot of lousy investments. It’s bad enough now.

The Social Security system will be solvent until the third decade of the 21st century. The stock market bubble will burst before that. It seems like a bad time to buy.

My Democrat dad, who lately has spent most of his time ripping Republicans, was particularly tough on Clinton. “First, he threw people off welfare. Now, he’s going to throw their money in the stock market.”

Fortunately, a bitterly divided Congress ensures that Social Security isn’t changing for a while - at least until Internet stocks prove themselves.

My dad began ranting about Amazon.com, which hasn’t made money, but whose stock is astronomically high.

“How are they going to make money selling books?” said this former professor, whose friends could only sell books by assigning them to students. Rants run in the family.

People forget a lot of things about Social Security. It isn’t meant to be a way to finance a retirement home in Tahoe. It’s meant to be insurance and it’s vitally important for those who are poor or disabled. The idea of brokers putting Social Security into some hot Internet stock is more than a little frightening. The idea of the government becoming majority owner of companies is very frightening to Republicans.

Social Security isn’t a savings account, where you get out of it what you put into it, with interest. Each generation pays for the generation that precedes it.

Well, my mom is the person in the family who really supports everyone. “I’m still paying into Social Security because I’m still working,” she said, “but I’m collecting it at the same time.”

My parents own stocks but they try not to think of them as real money. They’re terrified by the idea of Social Security on the big board.

They remember what happened to the stock market when Hoover was president. They remember why there was a need for Social Security. They remember the Depression.

My mom’s dad had to move from town to town for jobs and live off deer shot out of season. My father’s dad, the Republican, tried to find jobs in his warehouse for young men coming out of high school. His wife, my Republican grandmother, fed all the hobos, bums and unemployed men who came by the back door. All because of the stock market.

To fulfill our responsibility to the 21st century, we must remember the 20th century. But I hope I get mine, even if I can’t live on it. Hey, what do you expect from our generation?