On Social Security, a rare Bush stumble

Critics have moved into the vacuum left by the president's lack of detail about reforming the system

Author: Wes Allison, Anita Kumar

Published: February 1, 2005

In large measure, President Bush owes his unbroken string of major political and policy victories to his gift for defining key issues simply, then staying ahead of the debate and never letting his opponents cloud his message.

But as the president prepares to pitch his plan for reforming Social Security in Wednesday's State of the Union address, he finds himself in the rare position of having to answer his critics first.

Since winning re-election in November, the president has spoken often about his desire to revamp Social Security. Yet his unwillingness to provide key details about how it would work and who might win or lose has created a vacuum that his critics have happily filled, challenging Bush's claim that the system is crashing and sowing worry about his call for personal investment accounts.

With many fellow Republicans in Congress balking, and with polls showing lukewarm support for overhauling what many Americans consider a birthright, even the president's allies acknowledge he goes into Wednesday's speech behind in the war of words.

The White House's surprisingly lackluster campaign already may have cost the president his stated goal of passing Social Security reform this year. He had hoped to pass his plan by May.

"I don't think there's any question the past few weeks haven't gone well for him, because the left is attacking the whole concept and is unified against it, and the right is disorganized," said Stephen K. Moore, president of the conservative Free Enterprise Fund, which supports establishing personal Social Security accounts. "If Bush doesn't lead on this issue, Congress won't follow."

The president will follow Wednesday's speech with a two-day, campaign-style swing across the nation, including a visit Friday in Tampa.

But analysts and some Republicans say this is a slow start for a White House that has been masterful at dashing ahead on major issues, defining problems and offering solutions to win public support before the Democrats can get their shoes laced.

In 2001, despite widespread resistance in Congress, Bush passed his first round of tax cuts after convincing the nation they would stimulate a languid economy, even as experts warned the cuts favored the rich and would plunge the country into debt.

He won support for invading Iraq by convincing the nation that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat with chemical and biological weapons, even as most of the world and many Democrats remained skeptical.

During the recent presidential race, the Bush campaign defined Democratic Sen. John Kerry before Kerry could define himself, leaving Kerry floundering for a public identity.

Not so this time. In absence of a strong campaign from the White House, the AARP, the AFL-CIO and other groups already have spent millions making a case against the president's version of Social Security - even though he has yet to unveil it.

MoveOn.org, which raised millions of dollars for Kerry, announced Monday it would campaign against Bush's reform. The AARP recently ran $5-million worth of newspaper ads and plans another round. Other groups have organized letter-writing campaigns to Congress and circulated petitions portraying the president's notion of using Social Security money to establish personal investment accounts as risky, a boon to Wall Street and a bust for the common retiree.

"If we feel like gambling, we'll play the slots," one AARP ad says.

Mike Tanner, a Social Security expert at the Cato Institute, which supports Bush's plan, said it's not unusual for a president to wait before releasing details of a major proposal. But this time, the swiftness of the opposition caught Bush off guard.

"In all honesty, the White House was slow and didn't expect them to come out so quickly," Tanner said. "I think the opposition certainly dominated the first month."

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Crystal River, who supports personal accounts, said the president's lack of specifics has made it hard to answer her constituents' questions; her district has one of the nation's largest numbers of Social Security beneficiaries.

While home this weekend, she said, many voters acknowledged they worry about the long-term solvency of Social Security, but they also worry about the risks of private accounts and that the president's fix could add $2-trillion to the deficit.

Last week, residents in at least three Florida congressional districts received anonymous taped calls warning that the president planned to "privatize" Social Security and urging them to call their representatives to complain.

Brown-Waite got hundreds of calls and e-mails, as did Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores, and Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale.

"Right now, absent specifics, they are able to pull numbers from thin air and use them to scare seniors," Brown-Waite said Monday. "I'm concerned there aren't more specifics out there. ... I want to see it, I want to have an analysis done of the impact it's going to have on my district."

Security Security has emerged as the most challenging political issue for Democrats and Republicans alike. Each member of the U.S. House must stand for re-election next year, and none wants to be seen as being reckless or unconcerned about the nation's most popular entitlement program.

Polls show just over half of Americans support the option of investing some of their Social Security savings into the stock market, but the numbers drop when pollsters include caveats, such as noting that private accounts could be risky or that the cost of establishing the accounts could increase the deficit.

Most Americans have qualms about the long-term security of Social Security, but the president has failed to convince them there's really a crisis, said Karlyn Bowman, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This holds true among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.

The notion that Social Security is in trouble is by no means new; a 1981 poll found that most Americans believed the system would crash by 2000.

The yearslong cry of crisis may be part of the president's problem, Bowman said. "I don't know if that makes the president's task easier ... or whether people have just become inured to crisis, and say, "Well, that's just not a serious problem."'

It is unclear how far the president will go in his speech Wednesday night. Advocates want details, but some members of Congress say they expect him to offer only a glowing framework, and let it fall to them to produce the reform bill on Capitol Hill.

Analysts said it may be premature to judge the president on how well he has made his case, but Urban Institute president Robert Reischauer said Bush has a difficult job ahead - even more difficult than selling his major first-term initiatives, including tax cuts, Medicare reform and the No Child Left Behind Act.

"This is a different kind of challenge because we're talking about taking something away from people," Reischauer said. "We're dealing with the most popular issue that government provides. There is no painless fix."