President Bush took his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, to Atlanta last week to combine the lack of enthusiasm for his Medicare drug plan and the hostility to his Social Security reform and somehow create support for both. It was a brave effort, but it cannot be successful until the White House starts dealing with the public’s actual doubts about the futures of these two valuable programs.

One of the challenges with Medicare is trying to explain its new drug benefit while other politicians talk frankly about the issue of the entire program’s solvency. Medicare isn’t going to end, but it will be modified to remain affordable in the next several years. Why would a senior enter what looks like a complicated new system of health benefits – and there is the chance of a real benefit in the new Part D for many seniors – if the whole thing looks shaky?

A couple of years ago, many Republicans were demanding a major reworking of Medicare to keep it healthy over the coming decades. That’s still needed, but it could scare off even more seniors. A comparatively small reform to allow price negotiation on Medicare’s prescription drugs could have the effect of saving money and providing seniors with a more complete drug benefit.

Both the president and his mother spoke about Social Security. Neither, unfortunately, was helpful. President Bush said, “Here’s the problem: First of all, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. In other words, there’s not a trust. … No, the government takes your money and spends it. It’s called pay-as-you-go. You pay, and we go ahead and spend. And what’s left is a file cabinet full of IOUs to future generations. I know firsthand about the file cabinets. I went to West Virginia and looked at them. You’ll be happy they’re there. But there’s not real assets in them – it’s paper.”

Did the president expect to find bundles of cash or gold ingots in those filing cabinets? That would have been worth noting. The IOUs are the result of deficit spending and many of them carry the president’s name. If this is such a terrible thing, he should immediately stop deficit spending. Better, he should explain that those IOUs are important assets and are not the problem with Social Security. The government will honor the IOUs. The problem is the number of retirees compared with the number of workers. The ratio is falling, and benefits, revenues or both must be adjusted as a result.

Mrs. Bush said, “I’m here because I’m worried about our 17 grandchildren, and so is my husband. They will get no Social Security.” There is simply no evidence for this. As her son said, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system – the money that comes in goes back out again (except for the surplus still building for the baby boom generation). If no reform is enacted and the payments from all those IOUs are paid out, future retirees would still get 72 percent of the value that current retirees get.

Social Security never drops to zero. The debate in Washington is over how to keep the benefits close to what they are now or even improve them for certain beneficiaries and whether private investments should play a role in this public program.

Combining Medicare and Social Security is part of the administration’s larger agenda of “senior security” – with the claim that it wants to protect seniors more than the systems that support them. As a strategy, that’s a fine idea. But it is also one that ought to be matched by candor.