munities began to thrive. Moreover, the sport be-
came increasingly popular among young people
and college students in the United States, bringing
about a resurgence by the late 1980’s. In Canada, the
successes of the 1984 Olympics and the win of the
1985 CONCACAF Gold Cup notwithstanding, soc-
cer had difficulty attracting significant audiences.
The efforts of the CSL ultimately failed and led to a
merger with the U.S. professional league in the next
decade.
Further Reading
Hunt, Chris, ed.The Complete Book of Soccer. Rich-
mond Hill, Ont.: Firefly Books, 2006. Compre-
hensive compendium of the sport.
Markovits, Andrei, and Steven Hellerman.Offside:
Soccer and American Exceptionalism. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2001. Study of the
U.S. attitude toward the world’s most popular
sport.
Szymanski, Stefan, and Andrew Zimbalist.National
Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of
the World Plays Soccer.Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution, 2005. Comparison of different na-
tions’ relationships with their sports and athletes.
R. C. Lutz
See also Olympic Games of 1980; Olympic Games
of 1984; Olympic Games of 1988; Sports.
Social Security reform
Definition Attempts to maintain the financial
solvency of the U.S. government’s Old-Age,
Survivors, and Disability Insurance program
The 1980’s saw the first major change in the Social Security
program: Congress raised Social Security taxes and limited
benefits in order to prevent the program from falling into
bankruptcy.
Created in 1935, the Social Security program pro-
vides insurance for people with permanent disabili-
ties, those reaching old age, and their survivors. It is
paid for by taxing wages. The program ran into fi-
nancial trouble during the 1970’s. The twin eco-
nomic problems marring the 1970’s, rising inflation
and high unemployment, led to dramatically higher
Social Security costs coupled with declining reve-
nues. As the decade wore on, Social Security came
closer to bankruptcy. Demographics also conspired
against Social Security, as life expectancies began to
exceed the retirement age by a decade or more. In-
stead of retirees claiming benefits for a few months
or years, many would receive Social Security pay-
ments for decades, putting further pressure on the
program. By 1980, those familiar with the program
knew that significant changes would have to be
made to prevent bankruptcy. Both the president and
members of Congress faced difficult decisions about
how to reform a program that had defied all previ-
ous attempts to change it.
Social Security came to be known as the “third
rail” of American politics. Like the electrified third
rail of a subway system, the program was thought of
as killing the career of any politician who touches it.
Thus, few were willing to attempt to change or re-
form it. The resilience of the program was especially
apparent during the Ronald Reagan years: Reagan
believed in shrinking the size and fiscal responsibili-
ties of the federal government, but Social Security
escaped the budget cuts of his administration, which
weakened many other social welfare programs.
The inauguration of President Reagan had
marked a sea change in the American perspective on
social welfare policies generally. Every such program
experienced climbing costs, and the effectiveness of
each one was called into question. The programs
thus became a target of budget cutters seeking to
balance the government budget and change social
policy. The only major program to escape major cuts
was Social Security, the largest and most expensive in
terms of benefits paid and recipients.
As Social Security floundered toward bankruptcy,
reform seemed inevitable. Reagan’s early attempts
to change the system proved controversial, however.
His proposed reforms included reducing the quan-
tity of money received by those taking early retire-
ment and receiving Social Security before the age of
sixty-five, then 80 percent of full benefits. Reagan
proposed reducing the benefit level of those retiring
early to 55 percent of full benefits. This proposal
would have both reduced the amount of money paid
to early retirees and reduced the number of people
choosing to retire early. Moreover, those workers
choosing to defer their retirement to age sixty-five
would both defer the day when they began to draw
benefits and continue to pay more money into the
Social Security trust fund as they continued to earn
taxable wages. The president’s plan received littleThe Eighties in America Social Security reform 889