Contact Betty Booker at (804) 649-6805 or bbooker@timesdispatch.com

There are three points about Social Security every American should know.

Why? Because once the Nov. 2 election is over, we're likely to be assaulted with trumped-up reasons why we should allow Congress to undermine this most successful anti-poverty program for the middle and working classes in U.S. history.

Radical motives. We've been lied to about Social Security (and about many more issues) for at least 40 years by a determined, rich, far-right ideological movement that hides in neoconservative think tanks, educates malleable students, controls many media outlets and dominates current national legislative and executive leadership.

Among the aims - of what future House Majority Leader Dick Armey described in 1994 as "the conservative revolution" - were plans to persuade unsuspecting citizens to endorse major changes in our bedrock safety-net programs.

Tactics abound to separate us from our own best interests.

Here are the main ones directed at Social Security:

Declare there's a crisis and that the program is "going broke" soon.

Trumpet that claim in the media, think-tank papers, polls, talk shows, congressional hearings and government commissions packed with like-minded ideologues.

Back the "crisis" contention with figures and interpretations that are dis proved by nonpartisan economists.

Scare members of the public into thinking they're going to be even more impoverished in old age if they don't hurriedly accept the proposed "reform."

Denigrate people who raise caution flags.

Drive a wedge between those who support the "reform" and those who know that this reliable government program works.

Push supporters to put pressure on congressional representatives, many of whom owe their nominations, campaign financing and legislative influence to the same brokers, bankers, insurers and investment advisers who will make mega-bucks from proposed changes.

Erode the program by siphoning off its money into "private accounts" so that Social Security essentially becomes welfare for the elderly poor. As a welfare program, it becomes a likely target for cuts, because sooner rather than later, taxpayers will have to pay for the historically high deficits run up mainly by spending on the military-industrial complex and tax cuts that largely benefit the top 1 percent of the nation's taxpayers.

Repeating history. In the early 1980s, the federal budget was awash in red ink from President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, unemployment was at 10 percent and reports began emanating from Washington that Social Security was in serious trouble. So in 1983, Congress raised the Social Security tax, supposedly to be socked away for baby boomers' future Social Security retirement checks 30 years hence.

Instead, it was spent. Democratic New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called the '80s Social Security "crisis" a hoax and characterized the increased tax as "thievery" from the middle and working classes that allowed the rich to keep their tax cuts.

In 2001 and 2003, massive tax cuts were again enacted, the lion's share going to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers and helping create huge deficits. There's nothing but IOU's in the "lockbox," but they are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. And failure to back these promises could undermine the ability of the government to borrow from lenders, which keeps our economy afloat. Meanwhile, Social Security taxes from the middle and working classes allow the rich to keep their tax cuts.

There is, however, an honest way out. Peter Orszag, a Brookings Institution economist and co-author of "Saving Social Security," suggests that the program's 75-year shortfall, which last year was $3.8 trillion, could be eliminated by reducing part of the estimated $9 trillion to $12 trillion in recent tax cuts.

But again we're hearing talk of increasing the Social Security tax, which falls heavily on ordinary people, or of diverting part of the tax into private accounts so individuals can voluntarily invest on Wall Street. The far-right conservative Barry Goldwater made a similar suggestion in the'60s to make Social Security voluntary; the idea was dismissed as unacceptably radical.

Security or safety. Privatization of even a small percentage of the Social Security tax will enrich by billions of dollars Wall Street investment, insurance and banking firms, which are major contributors to neoconservative politics and policies.

Their management fees for private accounts, plus the estimated $1 trillion (or more) to convert the frugally managed Social Security Administration to private accounts, would reduce retirement income available to retirees and make them vulnerable to the whims of the market when they are least able to recover fiscal losses.

The bottom line: Workers already can invest in stocks, bonds and annuities for retirement on the open market as well as within IRAs and 401(k)-type accounts.

Social Security is the nation's fail-safe money for retirees, the disabled, widows and surviving children. Few common people are able to match its guaranteed life income through investments or through the purchase of expensive insurance annuities.

To give up its protection to gamble on the stock market really is courting genuine poverty in old age and disability.

Further reading: "Veering Right" by Charles Tiefer; "Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach" by Peter Orszag and Peter Diamond; "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" by Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot; and "1984" by George Orwell.

Contact Betty Booker at (804) 649-6805 or bbooker@timesdispatch.com