If Social Security reform were easy, it would have already happened. If every attempt to generate the revenue required for that reform is rejected, it will not happen.

Yet the Washington-based Club for Growth, an advocacy group for fiscal conservatism, evidently opposes any attempt to produce the revenue needed to cover the inevitable transition costs to an economically viable system.

The organization, despite favoring reform with personal accounts, criticizes the proposal by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to raise the cap on incomes subject to Social Security taxes from $90,000 to more than $150,000. A television ad, for example, shows old-fashioned airplanes crashing or flapping useless wings as an unseen voice warns, "Lindsey Graham's tax hike would hit millions of families, wipe out much of the Bush tax cut and punish small businesses." It describes the senator's proposal to pay transition costs as "a really bad idea."

But Club for Growth President Pat Toomey thought raising the cap was a fine idea four years ago when, as a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, he supported such a boost in the "21st Century Retirement Security Act." Attempting to explain his reversal, he told The (Columbia) State newspaper he backed the cap increase in 2001 "to get some momentum" toward a full debate on the issue.

But momentum toward Social Security reform is precisely what Sen. Graham is seeking in his quest for "common ground" across party lines. Doctrinaire refusals, from right or left, to consider practical solutions won't slow the inexorable decline of the system's critical worker-to-beneficiary ratio.

And the Club for Growth, which hails its aim to "help elect candidates who support the Reagan vision of limited government and lower taxes," should recall that President Reagan sustained Social Security by significantly raising payroll taxes in 1983.

The time bought by that tax increase is dwindling. A fundamental change is needed now for the federal retirement program, and a new source of revenue must be found to sustain the transition. Any argument to the contrary ignores demographic reality.