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| By Susan Raffo
In December, 1998, a number of leaders from gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) organizations attended the White House Conference on Social Security to begin work on a comprehensive, bipartisan reform of Social Security in 1999.
The debate surrounding Social Security and its future has steadily gained strength over the past year. A range of statistics released from federal and private agencies show a decrease in Social Security's ability to cover the benefits of a growing population, with the estimation that by 2032, Social Security will only be able to cover 72 cents on the dollar of needed benefits. Lesbian and gay leaders attended the conference to counter the invisibility of GLBT people within the debate. Issues specific to us have never been addressed by any of the past or current considered reforms.
For example, same sex or alternative family structures are rarely recognized on issues of inheritance, social security and insurance benefits, power of attorney, hospital visitation rights, and long term care decisions. We can't get Social Security's spousal retirement and survivor's benefits given to heterosexual couples, and unless we think ahead and can afford the numerous legal fees, few of us have the appropriate paperwork that recognizes our lovers and friends as primary relationships. What do we do when our friends and lovers have died and we need some form of assistance to manage our day to day lives? Who has the legal mandate to help us make decisions if we are unable to care for ourselves? And even if we are able, as age and disability become less synonymous terms with every passing year, where do we go to make sure our lives and cultures are valued? These are not idle questions. To think about Social Security reform and not pay attention to the historical exclusion of our lives and families is to maintain the institution of heterosexism in full force. However, this component of the debate is not the only queer element of the national discussions surrounding Social Security. Gay and lesbian activists are, for the most part, entering this public conversation at a time when "to privatize or not to privatize" or even, sometimes, "how to privatize" is the limit of its thoughtful debate. The basic structure of Social Security has remained popular and relatively unchanged since first legislated in 1935. The greatest change came in the 1950s when Disability benefits were added to Old Age Insurance. What has not changed since 1935 is the philosophical basis for Social Security. It is only now that a debate rages over its complete and total "reform". Much of the content of these debates is similar to what we heard before and during the welfare reforms: "too much money is being spent unwisely for not enough return" and "the program has grown burdensome and top heavy through mismanagement." Unlike the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, fewer individuals are accusing Social Security recipients of freeloading. The U.S. cultural understanding of Social Security is that we get what we pay for. As workers, we contribute a part of our wages to the pool of money and then, when we no longer work, we draw back from that fund. Having said that, the rhetoric is still there. Accusations of "greedy geezers" have floated through the debates in which the elderly are wrongly portrayed as well-off individuals residing in retirement communities in which they spend their days playing in the sun. This line of rhetoric directly mirrors the language surrounding welfare reform in which an undeserving population is portrayed as receiving a form of "special rights" by taking "our" tax money. Compared to welfare reform, this line of attack has been far less overt but it has still remained, hanging in the air during many discussions of reform. Currently, Social Security assumes a commonality among all workers, it redistributes wealth paid into its fund by sharing it among all workers when they reach retirement age or through disability or the death of a working spouse. While not all recipients receive the same amount through Social Security, the disparity between benefits is much less than existed when those workers were part of the workforce. Under the numerous systems of privatization currently under consideration, this commonality would be undermined. The majority of the proposed reforms work like this: workers are required to take a certain amount of money from their income and invest it in the private sector. The minimum amount of the contribution to be invested will be determined by the government. The money an individual receives after retirement will be determined by the amount invested and the movement of the market. While the US is currently enjoying a period of economic prosperity with a strong market, something which helps to generate enthusiasm around privatization, this period will, as it always must, end. Because the market will fluctuate, how much money you receive after retirement is not fixed. The current Social Security system guarantees a certain level of income upon retirement, in case of disability or upon the death of a spouse. While the level of income is not high and there are other problems to be worked out within this system, what does work is the word "guarantee." No matter how much you are able to contribute to Social Security due to your wages, you get a definite amount of money back. The needed reforms to Social Security are more about raising the level of money an individual receives, not changing the structure of the system. With privatization, a number of populations stand a strong chance of being penalized. There is no guarantee that money will be available to people whose relationship to the workforce is unsteady or compromised. In the new system, women will be penalized because statistically we earn less, live longer and interrupt our working careers more frequently than men. Given the earnings gap between most workers of color and white Americans, those who generally earn less income during their life time will receive less income upon retiring. In many cases, those workers will receive significantly less.
And unless the definition of "family" is changed in the private sector across the country, gays and lesbians are as likely to be penalized under privatization as we were under the old system. The same problems outlined in the old system, the assumption of a heterosexual model, will remain as private sector companies use the same legal framework as the public sector. Companies who rely on public opinion are not likely to recognize same sex relationships at this level of administration if it might hurt the profit margin.
There's another piece to this. With the decrease in guaranteed benefits available to low and minimum wage workers who can not generate enough income to invest in the private market, some other organization or individual is going to be responsible for the long term care of an aging population. Money for food and housing will have to come from somewhere. Just as welfare reform has placed the burden of care onto private organizations and family systems without providing adequate resources for success, so will a privatized Social Security reform place the burden of care on the same groups. Already, an increasingly expensive health care system combined with increasing life spans for most American citizens has placed much of the responsibility for elder and disability care on family systems and charitable organizations. While I believe that it is most ideal that each of us cares for those whom we love, I am wary of an assumption of family support without appropriate resources to guarantee this system's success. The issue here is not "care" but coercion. For those in our communities, this is especially an issue if we have been kicked out of our families and are one of the few survivors of our peer group. It is not a problem that people are living longer. This is something to celebrate. The new system's solution to longer life spans is to penalize those without numerous resources. Social Security has always been the most popular social welfare policy practiced in the United States. It is a policy born at the same time as a range of other labor and public well-being legislation that assumed it was the responsibility of the nation to take care of all of its members, understanding that if one part of the country was suffering, it affected the whole. It is this belief system and the legislation born out of it that has been steadily eroded over the past two decades. A privatized system of Social Security is a system that maintains the status quo. The rich remain rich and the poor remain poor. It is not surprising that the greatest proponents of privatized Social Security reform have also been proponents of the most rigorous welfare reforms; new systems that place economic gain over communal well being. Welfare reform criminalized women and children in need. A privatized Social Security reform criminalizes the elderly and disabled. The philosophical underpinnings that have led to these reforms have assumed that the responsibility for care lies with the family and the identified family is the traditional heterosexual model. Anyone not fitting into this model is asking for "special rights." In our communities, we have seen this term used to discount the very fact of our lives. We share this experience with those (or, for some of us, we also experience this due to being) in receipt of welfare, new immigrants and the elderly and disabled. It is not enough for activists to hope that we will be noticed within the current debates around Social Security reform. We need to question how the discussions are being held in the first place. There is still time to demand a more equitable model. Models that do not lose the communal ethic of the old system have also been proposed. Unfortunately, they do not garner the same attention as those proposals supported by business interests who stand to profit from a privatized plan. As citizens who experience exclusion from public benefits on the basis of our sexual orientation, we have to demand something different from what is proposed. Otherwise, we have the chance of gaining benefit and recognition for only our most privileged members. What a waste that would be when we can do so much better than that. |
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