Democrats appear ready to pounce on comments offered on Sunday by the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. William Thomas of California, in respect of Social Security. “We also need to examine, frankly . . . the question of race, in terms of how many years of retirement do you get based upon your race. And you ought not to just leave gender off the table, because that would be a factor,” the Republican congressman told NBC’s Tim Russert on “Meet the Press.” “To simply raise the age and find out that you’ve got gender, race, and occupational problems later, I would not be doing the kind of service that I think I have to do.”

One Democratic operative complained to the Drudge Report, “Bush’s Republican Party is full of ill-conceived, dangerous ideas about the future of Social Security. But no idea seems more dangerous or patently unfair than linking Social Security benefits to a person’s race and gender.”

But President Bush appears eager to have this debate. At a private meeting with black leaders at the White House on Tuesday, he reiterated the point that Social Security shortchanges black Americans.

The Democrats know as well as anyone that a facially neutral program might have a disparate impact with regard to different racial groups. And the fact is that Social Security has been a raw deal for black Americans for some time. The director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, Ronald Walters, has called Social Security “a form of ‘reverse reparations'” because it effectively transfers wealth from blacks to whites.

One problem is that lifetime Social Security benefits depend in large part on longevity, and the average life expectancy for blacks is almost seven years less than the average life expectancy for whites. Thus, a black man or woman who earns the same wages – and pays the same taxes – as a white counterpart will generally receive a lower rate of return. A 1996 study by the Rand Corporation found that African-Americans nationwide receive rates of return from Social Security that are 1% percent lower than those earned by whites. The effect is a lifetime transfer of wealth to whites from blacks that averages nearly $10,000 for each person.

If Mr. Bush engages the black community in this debate, Republicans may be able to persuade some young black voters to support the Social Security reform agenda. The plain facts illustrate how much the current system harms black communities. A research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, David John, found that 20-to 25-year-olds currently living in Rep. Charles Rangel’s congressional district in Harlem, for example, can expect to receive an implicit annual rate of return on their Social Security contributions of negative 8%.

It’s not only poor rates of return for individuals. The Social Security program also contributes to the gap in wealth between blacks and whites in America. “Because Social Security taxes squeeze out other forms of saving and investment, especially for low-income workers, many African Americans are unable to accumulate real wealth,” writes the director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, Michael Tanner. “And, since Social Security benefits are not inheritable, that wealth inequity is compounded from generation to generation.”

Moreover, since blacks tend to enter the workforce at an earlier age – but Social Security benefits are based only on the highest 35 years of earnings – they end up paying extra taxes into the system but receiving no additional benefits.

Some changes that have been suggested for Social Security, such as raising the retirement age, raising taxes, or reducing benefits, only exacerbate the disadvantage the program imposes on black workers. In contrast, a personal savings account would disconnect the benefits paid out from the recipient’s life expectancy – and it would give recipients the ability to leave their wealth to their families, since they’re the ones who own it.

As far as the other group mentioned by Mr. Thomas, women, are concerned, one also finds a disparate impact. “Social Security’s outdated benefit structure results in single women and dual-earner couples subsidizing the benefits of wealthier single-earner couples, which creates a sharply regressive element to the current benefit structure,” writes the president of the Social Security reform organization For Our Grandchildren, Leanne Abdnor.

All of which makes it seem like a poor strategic idea for the Democrats to focus on Mr. Thomas’s comments regarding race and gender. Now, women and minorities seem to feel at home in the Democratic Party. But if they look too closely at Social Security, they might find much to recommend the idea of personal savings accounts advocated by President Bush.