If President George W. Bush is re-elected, watch out for radical changes in the Social Security system brought about by his attempts to privatize this bedrock government program.

Witold Skwierczynski, president of the AFL-CIO Government Employees Council, says Social Security is solvent until 2052. But he said the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and the enormous cost of the war in Iraq are chipping away at the current surplus in the Social Security trust fund.

"That's how they are paying for the big tax cuts," he said. "They are going after the poorest elements of society."

His union represents the government workers in 1,300 Social Security field offices across the country that handle benefit checks for the elderly, needy children under 18 years of age and the disabled.

The administration is playing the scare card and telling young people that the Social Security system is going bankrupt. After the baby boomers retire, younger workers are being told, retirement benefits won't be there for them. According to this dire scenario, private investment accounts are the answer -- unless you want to talk about hiking the Social Security tax or cutting benefits.

Since he came into office, Bush has been trying to give Wall Street a chunk of the Social Security trust fund by permitting voluntary private investment accounts to be drawn from the program's payroll taxes.

A University of Chicago professor, Austan Goolsbee, has estimated that Bush's Social Security plan would provide a $940 billion windfall over 75 years to the banks and investment firms that would manage all of that money flowing into individual private investment accounts.

Goolsbee, an informal adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, says expenses would eat up 20 percent of the typical beneficiary's private Social Security account.

The Democratic presidential challenger has said he would not tamper with Social Security if elected.

Even more onerous is a reported project by the Bush White House to try to limit Social Security disability recipients to two years of benefits. Under the plan, the disabled would have to reapply for benefits every two years. Most of the 6.1 million persons affected are permanently disabled and have not had to reapply once their disability has been approved.

Dana Duggin, the AFL-CIO's top adviser on Social Security, said the administration's goal in trying to limit disability payments is "to get the recipients back to work."

One can only imagine the insecurity among the disabled if those new rules are adopted.

"We think it's appalling," Duggin said. "It reneges on a government promise" to the helpless that "Social Security would be there for them."

The administration is moving toward these controversial revisions under cover of the election campaign.

Last February, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before the Senate's Special Committee on Aging and said Social Security should be tackled sooner rather than later to avoid abrupt and painful remedies when the baby boomers start retiring.

He recommended cuts in benefits for senior citizens, particularly in the cost-of-living formula to compensate for inflation. It was not a wildly popular proposal.

Bush said that doing nothing about Social Security would be very costly in terms of money. But his plan to dismantle Social Security's pay-as-you go system will be even more costly in human terms.

"Reform" implies righting a wrong, fixing a blunder pr solving a problem. But we should watch carefully when this administration starts talking about "reform" to describe its plans for social programs that have worked well over many years.

Under those circumstances, "reform" might camouflage something quite harmful.

(Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com).

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