Increases in Social Security's retirement benefits, meanwhile, have long been tied to wages, which rise faster than prices. Graham would leave that system intact for people earning less than $30,000 a year. Higher-income retirees would have growth in benefits tied to inflation, which would shrink senior citizens' checks by billions of dollars.
Graham supports President Bush's call for individual accounts, but he says they should not be the focus of reform efforts. Such accounts would allow workers to divert some of their payroll taxes into stocks-and-bond portfolios that would follow them into retirement. The higher cap on taxable earnings would replace the diverted money, although Graham said he would consider "other revenue streams."
"The plan I've got will work," he recently told a packed classroom of students and faculty at Allen University, a historically black school in Columbia, but he acknowledged it also is going to infuriate everybody to some extent.
That's a safe bet. Dozens of conservative activists and lawmakers adamantly oppose higher taxes for Social Security. And congressional Democrats almost uniformly oppose benefit reductions.
In fact, Graham finds resistance in his back yard. "I've encouraged Republicans not to talk about tax increases or benefit cuts until Democrats put forth their ideas," said newly elected Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) after sharing the stage with Graham at the GOP dinner in Charleston. "I appreciate Lindsey testing the waters."
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), a Graham friend and fellow member of the 1994 freshman House class, says the senator risks a possible challenge within his party if he pushes tax increases too hard.
"If you come from a rural state that is as conservative as ours, I think you've always got to watch, in political terms, your flank," Sanford said. "You can't lose sight of how important lowering -- not raising -- taxes is."
The free-market group Club for Growth, meanwhile, is running TV ads in South Carolina attacking Graham for proposing tax increases. But the senator appears unworried. When Franklin D. Roosevelt created Social Security, he proved that "a forceful idea during anxious times puts you on the political map forever," Graham says. "These are anxious times. Those of us with forceful ideas will be rewarded by the public."
Filling a Political Vacuum
While his sister lived with their aunt and uncle, Graham earned bachelor's and law degrees at the University of South Carolina. He became an active-duty lawyer in the Air Force, then entered politics and won a state House seat in 1992. Two years later, he won an open U.S. House race, joining a vanguard of conservatives who handed control of the chamber to Republicans and their firebrand leader, Newt Gingrich.
In 2000, Graham backed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over George W. Bush in the bitterly fought South Carolina GOP presidential primary, and McCain remains a key role model. When Strom Thurmond retired from the Senate in 2002 at age 100, Graham easily claimed the GOP nomination. He won the general election comfortably, in part by hammering the Democratic nominee's opposition to a constitutional amendment banning the desecration of the American flag.
Ordinarily it would be folly for a two-year senator to claim a leadership role in an issue as weighty as Social Security. But Graham makes a plausible case for the title by focusing his lawyer's intellect and aw-shucks manner on a subject his colleagues have largely skirted: the unpleasant options of raising taxes, cutting benefits, borrowing heavily or leaving unaddressed Social Security's long-term solvency problems.
Graham expresses surprise that most freshman senators wait patiently for a turn in the spotlight, and that senior lawmakers often dabble at the margins of big issues. "The Senate is there for the taking," he says. He predicts that, eventually, a few Democrats will embrace his plan because voters will not tolerate a do-nothing stance. Once that happens, he says, Republicans will follow.
Graham says he lost his political shyness in 1997 when he helped lead an unsuccessful coup against Gingrich, his former mentor, and then publicly acknowledged his role. His actions did him no harm, in Washington or back home, he says.
"They try to intimidate you to be quiet," Graham says of congressional leaders and outside pressure groups. But an episode such as the Gingrich affair "emboldens you to speak your mind, and you lose your fear."
