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Our Nanny in Washington
Kenneth Apfel leads the nation toward social security reform

by Ben Barnhart

Kenneth Apfel’s lean figure crosses the modern office in an instant, his broad strides reducing the room to a toy-sized space. He extends a hand to greet his visitor and, perhaps, to offer congratulations on navigating the meandering hallways on the eighth floor of the International Trade Building in Washington, D.C.

     Apfel heads the nation’s largest federal agency, an institution that touches every American, and whose future has been hotly debated everywhere from local councils on aging to the highest corridors of power. As the Social Security Administration’s first commissioner confirmed by the U.S. Senate after the agency was separated from the Department of Health and Human Services in 1995, he welcomes – even encourages – this debate on the agency’s future.

     When President Clinton nominated him for the post three years ago, Apfel made it clear that his first priority was to oversee social security reform. His agency began an ambitious public education campaign that included more than 10,000 forums and town meetings nationally, plus a statement mailed to virtually every American detailing that individual’s lifetime earnings, social security payments, and projected retirement benefits. Apfel himself routinely testifies at congressional hearings and White House staff meetings and makes enough media appearances that he’s probably one of the most recognized faces in the cabinet.

     The walls of the commissioner’s offices are decorated with reproductions of vintage posters from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s urging Americans still reeling from the Great Depression to renew their faith in the future by participating in a new social program of retirement benefits. In a sense, Apfel is asking today’s generation to renew their trust in that institution, which provides support for the retired as well as the disabled and displaced, but is facing an uncertain future.

     For anyone who reads the daily newspapers or watches the nightly news, the numbers are familiar: Unless the social security system is revamped, by 2015 it will begin spending more than it collects, and will be depleted entirely by 2037, according to government estimates. A growing elderly population (the over-65 crowd will double by 2030) and a shrinking work force (the national fertility rate has fallen 43 per cent since 1960) is taxing the nation’s retirement system and, Apfel says, hard choices must be made and the sooner the better.

     “The American public needs to feel a sense of legitimacy about its institutions, and now some of that legitimacy is frayed,” he says.

     Apfel stresses that his agency faces a long-term problem but is not in immediate crisis. That makes reform more difficult in today’s society where attention span is short and issues change as quickly as headlines. Even the politicians who will eventually decide the fate of social security sometimes have trouble seeing past the next election.

     Apfel also emphasizes that the existence of the social security system is not the issue but rather how that system will maintain itself into the future.

     “Will social security be here in the future?” he asks rhetorically. “Of course it will.” But, he adds, if the system’s long-term health is not addressed now, “the changes will have to be more drastic and another generation will have to face an uncertain future,” and that point seems to trouble him most.


At age 52, Apfel is of the baby-boom generation, that population bubble born in the prosperous postwar era, a group now nearing retirement age, and the very generation that threatens the health of social security. He and his contemporaries made an early mark on America by spearheading the social revolution of the 1960s, speaking out with youthful passion and pursuing the belief that indeed they could change the world.

     In the fall of his senior year at UMass in 1969, a 21-year-old Apfel joined the Free University movement that had swept eastward from its birthplace in San Francisco with the promise of empowering students to shape their own education. He embraced the reform cause and recruited fellow students to take on that large, seemingly monolithic institution that governed their education: the University of Massachusetts.

     “That was my first real awakening about institutions and how institutions affect individuals and how changing institutions can have an impact on people’s lives,” Apfel says today. Although he’s smartly dressed in a business suit, he still wears a neatly cropped salt-and-pepper beard left over from his youth. “I wouldn’t call myself a hippie then,” he adds, smiling at the thought, “but my hair was certainly a lot longer.”

     During his senior year, he penned an essay titled “Educational Reform, Learning Experiences, and Free Universities” which appeared in the spring edition of Spectrum. The paper reflects the mood of youth activism in 1970 and the yearning for self-determination. “Free Universities prove that students can take on the responsibility for their own education and do it in a more meaningful way,” Apfel wrote.

     “My years at UMass were the first time that I started to become involved in issues broader than myself,” Apfel says now, “and it was great fun to be on the cutting edge of these changes.” Indeed, those changes seemed to appear around every corner – as a senior Apfel lived in Greenough, the first coed dorm in UMass history.

     After collecting a B.A. in sociology from UMass, the Worcester native moved to Boston and enrolled in a master’s degree program at Northeastern University in the field of rehabilitation counseling. Internships in the Columbia Point housing project’s welfare office and at Boston State Hospital solidified his belief that effective and well-managed social systems can improve the lives of all Americans, especially the impoverished and underprivileged.

     While in Boston, Apfel met and married Caroline Hadley who, coincidentally, had completed her psychology degree at UMass in 1974. The couple moved to Austin where he received a second master’s degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in 1978 before heading to Washington, DC, to begin his career in public service. Apfel joined Senator Bill Bradley’s staff in 1982 and helped formulate Bradley’s positions in the Senate Finance Committee, including the social security reform legislation of 1983. Apfel points to that action as a model for reform that needs to take place today.

     The 1983 restructuring resulted in lower payments for wealthier retirees, a gradual increase in the retirement age and a tax on social security benefits, but it also “put the institution on a strong footing for a forty- to fifty-year period,” he explains. “Some tough choices were made for the betterment of the whole of society,” Apfel says, adding that similar changes are necessary now to keep the institution fit well into the twenty-first century.

Apfel has been called the nation’s “nanny of retirement savings,” an appellation he gladly accepts. One of the most difficult audiences to reach in his crusade is the one that may be most affected by reform: younger Americans just entering the job market. Apfel says that, ironically, interest in social security issues is highest among the elderly who are likely to see little change in benefits during their lifetime.

     “It’s really about their future,” he says of the young set, “and it’s important that these discussions take place across the generations.”

     A very unscientific survey of UMass students seems to support Apfel’s claims. Senior Janet Barr says she feels as though social security is the least of her worries at this point in her life.

     “I know it’s something that will impact me,” she says, “but right now I’m thinking about graduation and going to grad school.” And junior Alicia Bottini echoes Barr’s sentiments: “You follow the issues that are relevant to you – like school and getting a job.”

     But Sean Kennedy, a graduate student in microbiology, says he has followed the social security reform debate and hopes to see changes in the near future. “I think they’ll have to raise the retirement age and I also think people above a certain income shouldn’t receive social security. It’s not something that I count on,” Kennedy says of retirement benefits. “I know I need to plan and save for my own future.”

That statement would certainly make Kenneth Apfel smile. “One of the greatest challenges of this job is to get people to think about their own future,” he says. He also encourages today’s students to have faith in social security as a basic support system not just for retirement but throughout their lives. One-third of all twenty-year-olds will become disabled and receive some benefits before reaching retirement, he says.

     “I would encourage today’s students to get involved in discussions about the system’s future. It affects you, your parents, your grandparents, and ultimately will affect your kids.”

     His commission will end in January 2001 on the same day as Bill Clinton’s departure from the presidency. Apfel’s successor will be appointed by Clinton’s. When the SSA was separated from the Department of Health and Human Services in 1995 – a project that, as HHS’ senior budget official and chief financial officer, Apfel played a key role in – six-year commissions were established intentionally to span presidencies, unlike most other federal commissions.

     It’s an attempt, says Apfel to “create some distancing from the political process.”

     Although Apfel could be appointed to another term, he’s also looking ahead to life after commissioner. Of course, he practices what he preaches and has made saving and budgeting as much a priority in his personal life as he has for the nation. Caroline Hadley says that she and her husband started saving early in their marriage for their two sons’ educations and their own retirement. Now all that planning is paying off as oldest son Derek begins his freshman year at Boston College.

     Apfel calls his commission at the SSA “the culmination of my federal career,” but adds that “his life of public service” will likely not end. “It may not be at this level in the federal government – running a major executive agency – but for me, public service is in my bones.”

     UMass Chancellor David Scott honored Apfel’s achievements in public service earlier this month when he presented the commissoner with the Chancellor’s Medal during a convocation in the Campus Center Auditorium.

     “Thanks to your ceaseless effort to educate the American public and bring us all into the critical debate about the future of Social Security, more and more of us are engaged and able to make informed, considered, personal and political decisions,” Scott said at the presentation ceremony. “You represent the tremendous potential of UMass students and the contribution that they can have on their community.”

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