1996, 28. Looks at the fight over middle-class fe-
male voters in the 1996 presidential race.
MacFarquhar, Neil. “What’s a Soccer Mom Anyway?”
The New York Times, October 20, 1996, p. D1. Ex-
plores the use of the term “soccer moms” and why
many people find it so misleading.
Poole, Barbara L., and Melinda A. Mueller. “Alien-
ation and the ‘Soccer Mom’: A Media Creation or
a New Trend in Voting Behavior?” InEngaging the
Public: How Government and the Media Can Reinvigo-
rate American Democracy, edited by Thomas J. John-
son, Carol E. Hays, and Scott P. Hays. Lanham,
Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. Research on
the gender gap in the 1996 presidential election
and the oversimplification of women’s attitudes
about the role of government by the use of labels
such as “soccer moms.”
Elizabeth Cramer
See also Clinton, Bill; Dole, Bob; Elections in
the United States, 1996; Family and Medical Leave
Act of 1993; Soccer; Sport utility vehicles (SUVs);
Women in the workforce.
Social Security reform
Definition Proposed changes to the Old Age,
Survivors, and Disability Insurance and
Medicare programs
In the 1990’s, federal largesse to middle class and elderly
Americans was viewed as pushing government debt to levels
projected to place intolerable burdens on the young and fu-
ture generations. Social Security was a main target of re-
form.
Deficit reduction was the primary driving force of
Social Security reform efforts in the early 1990’s. Bal-
ancing the federal budget in part by cutting back on
Social Security spending fueled the 1992 third-party
presidential candidacy of businessman H. Ross
Perot, who received 18.9 percent of the popular
vote. Entitlement programs comprised 54 percent
of all government spending in 1993, and about half
of that went to Social Security. In 1994, the Republi-
can Party’s Contract with America proposed a con-
stitutional amendment for a balanced federal bud-
get, raising the Social Security earnings limit, and
repeal of the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security bene-
fits.
By the end of the decade, the federal budget was
balanced and the Social Security Trust Fund ran sur-
pluses. Raising payroll taxes to generate surpluses
sufficient to cover projected costs was viewed with
political opprobrium. Payroll taxes were 7.65 per-
cent of wages paid each by workers and employers;
self-employed persons paid 15.3 percent of their an-
nual income. The taxable upper limit was $51,300 in
1990 and $72,600 in 1999. Increasing national sav-
ings and greater retirement incomes were added to
the rationale of reducing projected deficits for re-
forming Social Security. Privatization of part or all of
Social Security also received national attention.Major Efforts and Initiatives for Reform In 1992,
Massachusetts senator Paul E. Tsongas, New Hamp-
shire senator Warren Rudman, and Secretary of
Commerce Peter G. Peterson founded the Concord
Coalition, a national organization advocating re-
sponsible fiscal policy and targeting Social Security.
InFacing Up(1993), Peterson highlighted the pro-
jected federal deficits from roughly 5 percent of the
country’s gross domestic product in the 1990’s to 20
percent by 2020, the increased life expectancy at age
sixty-five from 16.8 years in 1990 to about 21.0 years
by 2040, the possible quadrupling of those over age
eighty-five, the reduction of the number of workers
supporting each Social Security beneficiary from
four in 1990 to two by 2040, and the portended in-
creased share of workers’ payroll to cover the costs of
Social Security and Medicare from 17 percent in
1990 to 50 percent by 2040. President Bill Clinton’s
Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Re-
form, of which Peterson was a member, could reach
no agreement on specific reforms.
In 1995, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think
tank, formed the market-based Project on Social Se-
curity Privatization. The project immediately re-
leased two studies, “Dismantling the Pyramid: The
Why and How of Privatizing Social Security” and
“Retiring with Dignity: Social Security vs. Private
Markets.” In January, 1997, the Cato Institute pub-
lished an adapted version of Harvard University
economist Martin Feldstein’s Richard T. Ely lecture
delivered at the annual meeting of the American
Economic Association in 1996. Feldstein argued
that the difference between Social Security benefits
and taxes, or Social Security wealth, crowded out pri-
vate capital accumulation, produced a rate of return
to beneficiaries lower than would be the case on av-786 Social Security reform The Nineties in America