From Here to Security: How Workplace Savings Can Keep America's Promise

CHAPTER 2

RETIREMENT’S BEDROCK: SOCIAL SECURITY

All we want are the facts, Ma’am.

—JACK WEBB as Joe Friday in the 1950s police drama Dragnet

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But they are not entitled to their own facts.

—SENATOR DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN

Apart from ensuring national security and domestic tranquility, the most vital goal for the president and Congress should be rebuilding Americans’ shaken belief that their government can actually work for the people; their loss of faith that government can work for them is deeply corrosive to our future. And no domestic policy achievement could do more to recapture lost trust than action to save our Social Security system, the country’s largest, most successful, and most popular government ...