Prometheus 6

Congressional Republicans Agree to Launch Social Security Campaign
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 31, 2005; Page A04

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. -- Congressional Republicans, after three months of internal debate, this weekend launched a months-long campaign to try to convince constituents that rewriting the Social Security law would be cheaper and less risky than leaving it alone, as the White House opened a campaign to pressure several Senate Democrats to support the changes.

The Republicans left an annual retreat in the Allegheny Mountains with a 104-page playbook titled "Saving Social Security," a deliberate echo of the language President Bill Clinton used to argue that the retirement system's trust fund should be built up in anticipation of the baby boomers' retirement.

Though I've never suggested it before, it may be time to get ol' Bill back in the public debate.

Clinton never supported privatization of Social Security. He said he was open to considering the idea.

"I don't know what I would do, but I am open to the idea that if we can get a higher rate of return in some fashion than we have been getting in the past, while being fair to everybody and guaranteeing that we'll still be lifting the same percentage of people out of poverty, we ought to be open to those options," Clinton said at a forum on Social Security at the University of New Mexico. "Because I think that's better than raising the payroll tax a lot more. . . . I don't want to cut benefits substantially . . . and I don't want to, you know, close down the National Park Service or stop supporting education."

The overall agenda of this administration will enrich those who are not in need, has already impoverished so many that small increase relative to the growth of the economy in funding the safety net and other programs to prevent poverty must be spread so widely that each person in need gets less.

As for the National Park Service, it seems Bush intends to fold it into the Department of Energy,

Clinton's support for privatization was contingent on its not damaging the middle and lower classes. And he asked (futilely) for budgetary restraint on the part of Republican Congresscritters.

Clinton used the opportunity to urge congressional Republicans once again not to use projected budget surpluses for deep tax cuts and to stash it away for Social Security. "In an election year, asking politicians to hold off on a tax cut is almost defying human nature," he said. But "let's deal with first things first."

And actually, even Republicans saw the sense in that.

House Republicans went into Tuesday's election promising to make deep tax cuts next year but emerged stressing the need to first ensure the financial future of the Social Security system.

"I am prepared to lead a bipartisan effort in the Congress and I'm counting on you to do your part," Bill Archer (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said yesterday in a letter to President Clinton, asking him to submit a "legislative initiative that is second to none."

Neither party has committed itself to support specific changes in the popular retirement program, and Republicans clearly want Clinton to go first.

Still, Archer's statements represented an important shift for House Republicans who had pushed unsuccessfully for big tax cuts this year only to be burned by Democrats' apparent success using Clinton's call to "save Social Security first" in several fall races.

But what did they do first? Dip into the surplus for tax cuts. Then cut tax rates so the surplus couldn't be recovered...and that surplus was the collateral for the retirement benefits they claim they were trying to protect.

If they want to invoke Bill Clinton, they have to live with his pointing out they are misrepresenting him.