New Senator Kirk Once Called for Means Testing for Social Security

A blast from the past. In 1985 Paul Kirk, who was just named to fill Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat, was chairman of the Democrat Party. He stepped in it big time (from the LA Times 1985 article):

Democratic National Chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. suggested Wednesday that Democratic congressional leaders consider eliminating Social Security benefits for people "who have no real need for them."

In a breakfast interview with reporters in Los Angeles, Kirk also suggested that Democratic leaders consider an across-the-board budget freeze for one year--including a cap on Social Security cost-of-living increases--while Congress seeks long-term solutions to the deficit.

Kirk later backed away from his comments after they set off a firestorm among Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, some of whom said privately that Kirk had undercut them in their debate with Republicans over proposals for controlling Social Security outlays.

Democrats have been assailing President Reagan and Senate Republicans for proposing two weeks ago that Social Security cost-of-living increases be limited to 2 percentage points under the rate of inflation in each of the next three years, with a guarantee of at least a 2% hike each year.

"It is outrageous that the chairman of the Democratic Party is suggesting a means test for Social Security," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles). "The Democratic Party has always supported Social Security as an insurance program, not a welfare program. We promised the American people that if they paid into this system they would be able to draw out of it in retirement and not have to subject themselves to the indignity of having to show whether they need the money or not."

Some Democrats said privately that the idea of a means test for Social Security undermines their effort to broaden the party's appeal to middle-class voters.

California Sen. Alan Cranston, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said, "I am a Democratic leader that Kirk is apparently referring to and I can tell you that no leaders are going to take his advice on either issue. A means test for Social Security benefits would undermine the long-term support for the program and, as for an across-the-board budget freeze, Social Security should not be included. It has its own separate fund."

Mickey Kaus has Kirk's statement:

Kirk's subsequent s**t-eating recantation was comically, almost self-defeatingly, transparent. By bedtime on the same day, he put out a statement declaring: "I was wrong. Our party ... is unalterably opposed to any cuts in Social Security benefits. I should not have mentioned the subject of a means test. I plan to undergo electroshock therapy to insure that this idea never again appears within my cerebral cortex without producing immediate nausea and revulsion." [E.A.]

OK, he didn't say that last sentence. But he said the one before it. ...

It would be awfully entertaining for some political reporter to bring this up.