Term Paper on "Crisis Humanity Has Not Yet Created"

Quoted Instructions for "Crisis Humanity Has Not Yet Created" Assignment:

Using information from newspapers and journals, explain whether the status of social security constitutes a "crisis".

Please use “Crisis” definition from book (Fern-Banks (2002) “ a crisis is a major occurrence with a potentially negative outcome affecting the organization,

company, or industry, as well as its ublics, products, services, or good name”)not from dictionary.

Other sources may be used (journals/newspaper)appropriately.

essay must be 3 paragraphs

Please included article attached and other resources in bibliography.

PLEASE NOTE: COPY OF DOCUMENT (ARTICLE WILL BE EMAILED ALSO.

Semantics Shape Social Security Debate; Democrats Assail 'Crisis' While GOP

Gives 'Privatization' a 'Personal' Twist; [FINAL Edition]

Mike Allen. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Jan 23, 2005. pg. A.04

Author(s): Mike Allen

Section: A SECTION

Publication title: The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Jan 23, 2005. pg.

A.04

Source type: Newspaper

ISSN/ISBN: 01908286

ProQuest document ID: 782721511

Text Word Count 986

Abstract (Document Summary)

So [Bush] and his supporters have started using "personal accounts" instead of

"private accounts" to refer to his plan to let younger workers invest part of

their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds. Republican officials have begun calling

journalists to complain about references to "private accounts," even though Bush

called them that three times in a speech last fall.

"Semantics are very important," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill

Thomas (R-Calif.)said last week when a reporter asked about "private" accounts.

"They're personal accounts, not private accounts. No one is advocating

privatizing Social Security."

The other area undergoing a semantic makeover is the financial threat to the

system. Bush said in his news conference before Christmas that "the crisis is

here," and asserted in a recent radio address that the system is "on the road to

bankruptcy." Although it will be at least a decade before the Social Security

system begins to pay out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes,

Vice President Cheney recently asserted that the system "is on a course to

eventual bankruptcy," while White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten said

the situation "is a crisis."

Full Text (986 words)

Copyright The Washington Post Company Jan 23, 2005

President Bush is trying to keep the word "private" from going public.

As the two parties brace for the coming debate over restructuring Social

Security, polls and focus groups for both sides have shown that voters --

especially older ones, who vote in disproportionately heavy numbers -- distrust

any change that has the word "private" attached to it.

The White House has a logical idea: Don't use the word. This is difficult

because, after all, they would be "private" accounts, and Bush's plan would

"partially privatize" Social Security.

So Bush and his supporters have started using "personal accounts" instead of

"private accounts" to refer to his plan to let younger workers invest part of

their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds. Republican officials have begun calling

journalists to complain about references to "private accounts," even though Bush

called them that three times in a speech last fall.

"Semantics are very important," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill

Thomas (R-Calif.)said last week when a reporter asked about "private" accounts.

"They're personal accounts, not private accounts. No one is advocating

privatizing Social Security."

"Don't dismiss the use of a word," Thomas added. "The use of a word is critical

in making law."

Democrats have their own linguistic problem: They want to banish the term

"crisis." Democratic Party leaders are urging members to discuss future Social

Security shortfalls as a "challenge" rather than a crisis, and assert that Bush

is trying to manufacture a crisis to justify making changes that many Democrats

say are unnecessary. The White House has fired back with a transcript showing

that President Bill *****, during a Georgetown University address in 1998,

spoke of "the looming fiscal crisis in Social Security."

Republican officials also circulated a quote from the late senator Daniel

Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), chairman of a Bush- appointed commission on Social

Security, who in 2000 called privatization "a scare word."

The battle over the vocabulary of restructuring Social Security is the latest

example of the lengths to which politicians and their consultants go to test and

refine wording in an era when so many voters are influenced by the sound bites

in television newscasts. Both sides have commissioned expensive research to

guide their word choice as they prepare their cases.

The president's plan would allow younger Americans to divert a third or more of

their payroll taxes into private investment accounts to enhance their long-term

benefits.

Pollsters on both sides of the Social Security debate said they believe that

semantics could be destiny, given the skittishness of lawmakers and voters about

changing the popular system, which will turn 70 on Aug.14.

Michael D. Tanner, director of the Social Security project at the libertarian

Cato Institute, said "the term 'privatization' always polls about 20 points

lower than a description of it." "The problem is that there is no good term,"

Tanner said. "People have tried 'modernization' and 'personalization.' They all

sink like a rock."

Reflecting the new premium being placed on language, Bush turned prickly a week

ago Friday during an interview with The Washington Post aboard Air Force One

when he was asked if he would talk to Senate Democrats about his "privatization

plan."

"You mean the personal savings accounts?" the president scolded. "We don't want

to be editorializing, at least in the questions."

Bush generally refers to "personal accounts" but said during a September speech

at a Republican fundraiser in Washington that he wanted to offer younger workers

"a private account that they can call their own, a private account they can pass

on to the next generation, and a private account that government can't take

away."

Republican officials began warning their congressional candidates against using

any form of the word "private" in 2002, when Democrats seized on it to argue

that the addition of individual investment accounts to Social Security would

jeopardize the nation's safety net.

Republicans have not always resisted the term. Cato, an early champion of adding

individually controlled accounts to Social Security, started a policy incubator

called the "Project on Social Security Privatization" in 1995. After complaints

from Republican leaders, the name was changed in 2002 to the "Project on Social

Security Choice."

The other area undergoing a semantic makeover is the financial threat to the

system. Bush said in his news conference before Christmas that "the crisis is

here," and asserted in a recent radio address that the system is "on the road to

bankruptcy." Although it will be at least a decade before the Social Security

system begins to pay out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes,

Vice President Cheney recently asserted that the system "is on a course to

eventual bankruptcy," while White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten said

the situation "is a crisis."

Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, said such terminology is important,

because "to develop support for major social change, the status quo has to be

scarier than the change."

McInturff said the power of language in shaping public opinion on the question

can be seen in polls he conducted last year. A majority of respondents said they

wanted to keep the system basically the same when asked about allowing "people

to invest some of their Social Security taxes in private accounts." But a

majority favored change when he added the phrase "like IRAs or 401(k)s."

"It's important that the change be connected back to something familiar," he

said.

Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, said any form of the word "private"

suggests "a radical change to Social Security."

"People have seen lots of risks and rip-offs occur, and the virtue of Social

Security is that it has been a . . . very reliable system for a very long time,"

Garin said.

So, according to Garin, Democrats will "do everything they can to force

Republicans to live with the language of privatization."

"The debate will be a test of wills over what we call this thing," he said.