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Cool Reception on Capitol Hill to Social Security Plan
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Carl Hulse, The New York Times
February 4, 2005
Steve Sack
As Mr. Bush traveled to North Dakota to begin a five-state tour to sell his idea for personal retirement accounts, the Democrats engaged in a bit of political theater of their own, trekking across town to the memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Social Security's creator, to denounce the White House plan.
There, they unveiled a letter calling any proposal that would boost the deficit "immoral, unacceptable and unsustainable." Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, whose heavily Republican state is on Mr. Bush's itinerary, was the only Democrat who did not sign.
At the same time, two Republicans certain to play a role in shaping any Social Security legislation, Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana and Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, expressed deep reservations about Mr. Bush's idea of allowing workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts, though for different reasons.
Mr. McCrery, the chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Social Security, said Mr. Bush's idea of diverting payroll taxes left Republicans open to attacks that they were weakening the program from Democrats and advocates for retirees, including AARP, a powerful group whose support helped pass Medicare prescription drug legislation in 2003.
"It creates a political problem that appears to me to be very difficult to surmount," Mr. McCrery said, though he added that he was willing to be persuaded otherwise by the White House. "I am certainly going to listen to them with an open mind."
Ms. Snowe, a moderate Republican who serves on the Senate Finance Committee and who represents a state with a sizable elderly population, said she had "serious concerns" about the idea, and strongly favored continuing the current system in which retirees receive a guaranteed payout every month.
"It has worked exceptionally well for 70 years," she said. "I think it's in our national interest."
While many Republicans praised Mr. Bush for having the courage to broach a volatile issue in American politics, it was clear that the president had raised as many questions as he had answered. Some lawmakers said Mr. Bush's State of the Union address Wednesday helped persuade Americans that Social Security is indeed in crisis, as the White House says. But the division of opinion on Capitol Hill suggested that there is hardly a clear course for moving ahead with legislation.
Some Republicans continued to express strong support for the president's push on Social Security, saying that Congress needed to move now to avoid a fiscal calamity later. Senator John E. Sununu of New Hampshire is one of several lawmakers who campaigned on a platform of remaking Social Security to include individual investment accounts, and he said Thursday that he did not think it would be difficult to sell that idea to the public.
"If you put together a plan that brings us toward a solvent, strong, sustainable Social Security system, it is an enormous victory for future generations that would be stuck with that debt," Mr. Sununu said.
But others, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said they would issue their own proposals. "I don't think the solution is just private accounts," Mr. Hagel said.
Mr. Graham has been touting a plan that would remove the current $90,000 cap on Social Security taxes to help pay for the transition to private accounts. He said Thursday that he believed the president could successfully sell the concept of individual savings accounts, but said the initiative would stall if opponents were able to attack it for driving up the deficit. At the same time, Mr. Graham said he was beginning to detect the stirrings of interest from some Democrats who are willing to explore alternatives to the president's plan.
One of those Democrats is Mr. Nelson, who has already met at least once with Mr. Graham to discuss Social Security. Mr. Nelson, who plans to appear with Mr. Bush when the president travels to Nebraska on Friday, said Thursday that he did not sign the Senate Democrats' letter because he wanted to see more details of the White House proposal before taking a position. And he was uneasy with the letter, which attributed part of the rising deficit to Mr. Bush's tax cuts.
"I don't think I could sign a letter that raised questions about tax cuts I supported," Mr. Nelson said.
Republicans, for their part, are trying to portray Democrats as having a do-nothing attitude, a strategy Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, said would not work. "If you admit there's a problem, then saying we don't have any plan to do anything about it is not a viable solution," Mr. Santorum said. "You have several Democrats who have admitted there is a problem."
Democratic leaders said they would keep the door open to considering changes in Social Security, but insisted that any plan could not add to the deficit or reduce benefits and must be equitable to all workers.
"Democrats created Social Security," the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, said at a rally. "Democrats defended it against Republican raids. And it will be Democrats who lead the way in strengthening Social Security for future generations."
Both sides said it was too soon to tell how all this would play out. Mr. Santorum dismissed the Democrats' letter, which suggested the Senate would not be able to break a Democratic filibuster, as political posturing.
Representative Rob Portman of Ohio, a leading House Republican on retirement and tax issues, predicted that the House would fashion its own legislative package out of the basic elements of the White House plan. "I'm O.K. with the president giving us a little running room," Mr. Portman said. "We need to grapple with the politics of the best way to achieve the results."
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