The Bush administration has figured it out. If the goal is to make voters more sympathetic toward Republicans, all you have to do is to fool them into thinking they are members of a phony “ownership society,” create a non-existent crisis around Social Security and hammer news organizations until they adopt your language rather than words that would more accurately reflect reality.

First, let’s describe reality. Contrary to President Bush’s assertion, there is no crisis. Social Security trustees report that if left unchanged and using the most pessimistic economic forecasts, the program can pay all scheduled benefits through 2042. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the program can continue as is until 2052, a decade longer.

Does the program need tweaking? Absolutely. But that could be done with a single stroke – repeal a third of the tax cuts Bush wants to make permanent.

Why change Social Security to make it riskier for future retirees? A worker who is now 20 years old will experience a cut of one-third in his or her benefits – approximately $160,000 – throughout their retirement, according to estimates by the Washington-based Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Theoretically, this could be made up through the private investment component of retirement. But that’s not a sure bet, either. Remember how the dot-com frenzy became the dot-gone debacle in 1970? No one can guarantee that we won’t experience a repeat of that riches to rags reversal.

Not enough attention is being given to the high administrative cost that will be associated with privatization.

“The administrative costs of Social Security are just 0.6 cents of every dollar that gets paid out in benefits,” the CEPR paper notes. “By contrast, the administrative costs of systems of private accounts, like the one in England, eats up 15 cents of every dollar in benefits. Social Security also has a minimum amount of fraud and abuse, as numerous government audits have repeatedly documented.”

The paper also observes, “Virtually everyone agrees that Social Security is a great system. It provides tens of millions of workers with a guaranteed, core retirement income. It also provides disability insurance to people during their working years. In addition, it provides survivors’ insurance to the children of workers who die at any early age.”

Why would anyone want to change the one federal program that nearly everyone agrees is working?

In a word: Politics. By drastically altering Social Security, Bush would be dismantling the crown jewel of the Democrats’ New Deal program that provided a safety net for the neediest of Americans. By shifting funds from the federal government, Bush also would be simultaneously rewarding his financial backers on Wall Street and helping persuade retirees that they should have an affinity for the stock market. In other words, they’re more likely to become Republicans.

The reality is that when the higher administrative costs and the vicissitudes of the stock market are factored, the payout under the Bush plan is not much, if any, better than the return one now receives from the government bonds now being held by the Social Security trust fund.

Astoundingly, the news media allows itself to be goaded by the White House. Conservatives have learned that language is everything. In their polling, they discovered that the public is more accepting of “personal accounts” than “privatization” to describe the Bush proposal. Therefore, they are careful to use the more acceptable term.

“While it is not unusual for politicians to try to spin the terminology used in debate, journalists should avoid changing word usage simply because some politicians think it will be to their advantage,” says a report by Fairness & Accuracy in the Media (FAIR).

But journalists are accommodating Republicans.

“Republican officials have begun calling journalists to complain about references to ‘private accounts,’ even though Bush called them that three times in a speech last fall,” the Washington Post reported.

FAIR noted that Carl Cameron of Fox News began asking Bush about “a potential private account” at a news conference last month before quickly amending his question to say “personal account.”

The Columbia Journalism Review pointed out that Associated Press reporter David Espo used the phrase “private account” 15 times in Social Security stories published in 2003 while referring to “personal” accounts only once. This year, however, he had switched to using “personal” accounts 16 times and “private” accounts only twice.

It’s bad enough when any administration, Democratic or Republican, lies or misleads the public to advance a political agenda. It’s even worse, when the news media are complicit in this deception.