Analysts Urge Move to Private Social Security : Seek End to Corporate Income Tax in Proposal to Reduce Role of Government

WASHINGTON —  Representatives from some of the nation’s most influential think tanks advised President Reagan on Wednesday to use his second term to move toward a private-sector alternative to Social Security and an end to corporate income taxes.

The policy analysts made those proposals as part of an overall plan for reducing government’s role in American life.

The theme of their 73-page document, which was presented to Reagan during a White House meeting, was that the President should follow “bold initiatives . . . to further reduce the social and economic burdens that have been imposed by the expansion of government power, and to promote the growth and efficiency of private institutions.”

The report suggested abolishing corporate income taxes, requiring Senate reconfirmation of federal judges who now serve life terms, reducing the influence of Congress while strengthening the presidency, and giving many legal tasks now limited to lawyers to real estate agents, bankers and others.

As for Social Security, the study suggests finding a private-sector alternative to the government program, which the study says has become too expensive and is unable to respond to such changes in society as longer life spans.

Thomas D. Bell Jr., chairman of the Hudson Institute, which organized the effort, emphasized that the members of the Committee on the Next Agenda were acting as individuals in issuing the report.

Bell said private alternatives to government programs are necessary so programs are “maintained in a way that government won’t end up in the long term holding the bag.”

Other organizations represented on the study panel are the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Institute on the Research of Economics of Taxation, the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

The report was based on the idea that “concentration of power in the hands of government has undermined two fundamental traditions: reliance on individual responsibility as the force for economic progress and reliance on the family as the source of social stability.”

The report calls for the United States to reassume “the mantle of world leadership” and endorses the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative for a space-based system that would knock out incoming nuclear missiles.

“Our deterrent would be enhanced, not weakened,” by pursuing the so-called “Star Wars” strategy, the report said.