At the close of April 2005, in an attempt to save his failing effort to privatize Social Security, President Bush made a new proposal that he described as progressive indexing. The idea is to provide a sliding scale of Social Security benefit cuts for future retirees to supplement his earlier proposal for "volunteer" private investment accounts.

Under progressive indexing, benefits for about 70 percent of workers would be indexed to increases in consumer prices rather than to increases in average wages, currently used in computing retirement benefits. Since wages rise about one percentage point faster than prices, benefit calculations at retirement for middle and upper-middle class Americans, using prices, would climb much more slowly, thereby reducing benefits.

Under progressive indexing, workers earning less than $20,000 a year would not suffer a cut in Social Security benefits. However, a 25-year-old worker today earning $37,000 a year would have a 16 percent benefit cut if he/she retires in 2045; a worker earning $58,000 a year would have a 25 percent cut in benefits by 2045; and a worker earning $90,000 a year would have a 29 percent benefit cut by 2045. By 2075, these benefit cuts for the earning amounts indicated would be 28 percent, 42 percent, and 49 percent, respectively.

Progressive indexing would undermine a central bargain made in 1935 when Social Security was established: everyone in the system should be treated equally. Social Security is not a welfare program for the poor, but a form of social insurance which guarantees that people at all income levels who pay into the program reap its rewards: for survivors if a worker dies, for a worker who becomes disabled, or for a worker who retires.

For 70 years, the Social Security program has been universal, treating every beneficiary equally. By means-testing, President Bush and his conservative allies are seeking to destroy universality, one of the basic features of Social Security that has maintained the program's popularity for so many years.

It's important for Americans to understand the destructive goal of progressive indexing and to resist this new proposal which would supplement the president's goal of private investment accounts (privatization). Both of these proposals, if adopted, would undermine the Social Security program and ultimately destroy it. We must not let it happen.

Lawrence J. Kaplan