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Martinez Focuses On 'Entitlement Reform'

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By WILLIAM MARCH, The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 31, 2007

TAMPA - Already immersed in one of the most controversial issues on the political scene, immigration reform, U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez appeared ready Wednesday to leap into another - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid revisions.

Martinez, R-Orlando, co-hosted a presentation at the University of South Florida by several government finance experts about what they called a looming, potentially disastrous financial crisis stemming from the programs.

The story they told isn't new: An aging population is consuming ever greater amounts of health care and retirement benefits compared with the number of workers whose taxes pay for those benefits.

But the experts, including U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, attempted to convey what they said was the seriousness of the problem.

'We're in a $50 trillion hole, and it's getting deeper by $3 trillion a year,' Walker said of the commitments for future health care and retiree benefits.

Martinez acknowledged that Social Security is considered the 'third rail' of politics, like the electrified third rail of a subway train - touching it is said to be deadly.

'But we have no choice but to touch it,' he said, introducing the panel of experts. 'These programs are weak and worsening over the last year. It's time we did something about it.'

'This Is The Time'

Later, in comments to reporters, Martinez added, 'We need reform of the health care system, and we need entitlement reform. This is an opportunity, this is the time,' meaning the period before the presidential election.

Martinez has supported President George Bush's proposal for partial privatization of Social Security.

But other than that, said a spokesman for his office, he has no specific legislative initiatives to propose immediately on major changes in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, the largest programs among those often called 'entitlement programs.' His goal was to begin discussion of the issue.

The program Martinez co-hosted at USF was sponsored by the Concord Coalition, a watchdog group on fiscal policy, which for years has contended that Social Security is fiscally unsound and should be drastically revised.

But the panel included experts with various points of view, including the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, the liberal-oriented Brookings Institution and Walker, as well as Concord Coalition head Robert Bixby.

Concord spokesman Harry Zeeve said the group has sponsored more than 20 of the panels across the country over the past 18 months or so, often hosted by members of Congress.

'The organizations don't all agree' on a solution, he said, 'but we agree on the math. So we've stayed away from specific solutions while we tried to outline the problem.'

He said the aim is 'to make it safe for our elected officials to talk about it - to deactivate that third rail.'

Social Security Fixes

Walker suggested changes in Social Security that he said would solve the program's problems and might be comparatively easy to enact:

Gradually increasing the retirement age in relation to life expectancy.

Increasing the amount of individual income subject to Social Security taxation.

Lowering the benefits upper- and middle-income people are entitled to relative to the income they earned while working, known as the 'replacement rate,' and raising that ratio for poor people.

All of those proposals, however, have been controversial in the past.

Walker said the federal budget deficit has worsened in the past few years.

At the beginning of this century, he noted, the federal budget was showing a surplus, and all federal debt was projected to be paid off in a few years. But today, interest on the national debt is more than the cost of the Medicaid program and more than was appropriated last year for military operations in Iran and Afghanistan.

'When you're in a hole,' Walker said, 'the first rule is to stop digging.'

Martinez said a divided government such as the one now in place, with a White House and Congress controlled by different parties, may be the best atmosphere for achieving a solution to politically thorny issues, including entitlement reform and immigration.

Martinez, himself a Cuban immigrant, has been one of the Senate leaders on an immigration bill that would allow some illegal immigrants now in the country to obtain citizenship by working, not having a criminal record, paying fines and learning English - an idea bitterly opposed by many in his own party.

Even as he hosted a program featuring a Heritage Foundation speaker, opponents outside the USF Alumni Center meeting room passed out fliers citing the foundation's criticism of his proposal. Some opponents call his plan 'amnesty' for illegal immigrants, which Martinez and other proponents deny. The path to citizenship in his bill, he noted, would take most illegal immigrants 13 years.

Reporter William March can be reached at (813) 259-7761 or wmarch@tampatrib.com.

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