The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning, “Congress’s hot August recess has begun with rhetoric to match, with Democrats pummeling Republicans for wanting to trim Social Security, and Republicans hammering Democrats for favoring tax increases.”

Likewise, CNN notes, “Democrats pledged Friday to not only keep Social Security in place, but use the historic program against Republicans ahead of the midterm election.”

Moderate Republicans in Congress will probably quake about those crazy guys like Ken Buck who want to save social security instead of let it go bankrupt. But conservatives need not run away from the issue.

For starters, most Americans know that social security is going to go bankrupt unless something is done. Likewise, most younger Americans don’t expect the program to survive until they get to retirement. Republicans willing to discuss this issue, and articulately explain, as Sharron Angle is doing, that the Democrats are using the social security trust fund to expand big government will have no problem.

But this isn’t the only reason the GOP need not worry. If we go back to 1994, we will find the Democrats doing the exact same thing. That didn’t work so well, did it? Let’s take a look.

John King, then a reporter for the Associated Press, wrote on October 31, 1994, “Hoping to boost Democratic prospects and campaign, President Clinton warned Monday that “snake oil” Republican promises would force devastating Social Security cuts.”

Marianne Means, writing in the Baltimore Sun on October 28, 1994, wrote, “Currently, Democrats and Republicans are heatedly charging each other with crafting dire secret schemes to hurt the elderly by drastically slashing their benefits. At the same time they are denying that they themselves would dream of doing any such thing.”

On September 30, 1994, in an interview with Alan Colmes, Bill Clinton addressed the issue himself saying, “What they’re for is to go back to trickle-down economics. They made over a trillion dollars worth of promises to the American people in this contract. And how they’re going to pay for it is either to explode the deficit again, after we brought it down, or to cut Medicare or Social Security or never pay for the crime bill.”

Note that, like Barack Obama, Clinton didn’t just pound them on social security, but also on going back to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Clinton would, as Obama is doing now, continue using the “return to Bush” theme all the way to the end of the campaign.

The U.K.’s Independent reported on October 31, 1994, “Hardly back from his gruelling Middle East trip, Mr Clinton used his weekly radio address to exhort Americans not to listen to the ”easy promises” of Republicans, which would bring back the ”failed policies” the country had sampled under Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Buoying him were opinion polls showing his own pop ularity on the mend, and likely Democratic voters on the increase.”

The Left will look at the dates and say, “Whew. They waited until it was too late in 1994. At least we’ve started up in August.”

I hate to disappoint them, but throughout 1994, the Democrats tried desperately to scare people that the GOP would kill social security and bring back George Bush’s economy. It did not exactly work out well for them.