Entitled to Insolvency

Generation X faces the inevitable

Will Generation Z force a “distancing of the U.S. from its long-time client in Tel Aviv”? A few septuagenarian hippies, reliving their college days, think so.

Skepticism is appropriate. Baby Boomer nostalgia notwithstanding, young adults rarely engineer profound changes in public policy. Look no further than Generation X. Three decades ago, it rose up to tackle “our Vietnam.” The challenge proved too daunting.

In the early 1990s, Rob Nelson and Jon Cowan, two D.C. politicos, harvested contributions from Ross Perot and Pete Peterson to pursue what The New York Times called a “grandiose vision: that the impact of their ideas may rival that of the antiwar crusade of the 1960’s.” Lead or Leave targeted Social Security’s “generational scam.” Broad reforms of the program were necessary, including a hike in the retirement age to “at least 70,” elimination of the payroll tax and a shift to “paying retirement benefits through an income tax increase,” and reduced “cost-of-living adjustments over the next 10 to 15 years.”

Nelson and Cowan enjoyed glowing MSM coverage — including a U.S. News & World Report cover photo — but in mid-1995, Lead or Leave went kaput. By then, a new entity had grabbed the “Xers will fix the nation’s fiscal apocalypse” baton.

More sober, and more connected, Third Millennium’s mission was “to redirect our country’s attention from the next election cycle to the next generational cycle, and in the process move young adults to action.”

Congressional testimony was a specialty. Third Millennium Executive Director Rich Thau even met “privately with the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” who was “intrigued” by his organization’s “efforts to reform entitlement programs.” In the summer of 1995, “Third Millennium D.C. members could be seen at the WHFestival passing out information to alternative music lovers on their way to the mosh pit.” Later that year, the organization “launched a site on the World Wide Web to educate the Internet’s millions of users about entitlement programs and the national debt.” Board member Heather Lamm’s March 1996 address to a mutual-funds conference proved good enough for Vital Speeches of the Day.

Third Millennium didn’t ask much of its potential members: just $9.00 a year. For that small sum, they’d have their “voice heard regularly by the political and media establishment,” get a copy of “our 32-page Third Millennium Declaration,” receive the newsletter Future Focus, score invites to “local chapter events in selected cities,” and be shipped “computer software used to access The Transom, our on-line network” — “Mac (System 7 or later),” “Windows (3.0 or later),” or DOS.

It was cruelly ironic that by the time the third millennium arrived, Third Millennium was dead. Visit www.thirdmill.org, and all you’ll find is “HTTP Error 404.”

Evidently, the careers of the organization’s principals weren’t crippled by their association with an advocacy effort gone bust. Thau is president of a company that “helps its clients become more successful by applying the power of behavioral science and social psychology to dial test focus groups.” Lamm is a Denver educrat — probably not a difficult gig to land, given that her father served three terms as Colorado’s governor — who’s redirected her attention from Social Security’s “collision course with bankruptcy” to her children’s inability/unwillingness to replace the toilet paper in their bathroom. Jonathan Karl, another board member, unquestionably attained the highest profile: The New Republic, the New York Post, CNN, ABC News, and three books exploring his Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The oldest members of Generation X will be eligible for entitlements within a decade. Huh. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently explained, the “Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance … trust fund will deplete its reserves by 2033,” at which point “all retirees — regardless of age, income, or need — will face a 21 percent across-the-board benefit cut.” Medicare’s finances aren’t much better. Insolvency is projected to strike in 2036. (“At that point, the law requires an immediate 11 percent cut in payments.”)

The slacker generation didn’t rescue The Swamp from the greedy-geezer lobby. Blame whomever or whatever you like. Its self-appointed leaders were too elitist. (Both Lamm and fellow Third Millennium board member Alden Levy had their wedding announcements printed in The New York Times.) Xers never had the numbers. The threat being fought was too far in the future.

As Generation X prepares to enter its golden years, entitlement insolvency awaits. Lame, dude. Probably should have spent a little more time studying budget stuff, and a little less time in the mosh pit. Fiscal reality bites.