New Strategy on Social Security - Gay Marriage Ban Use Social Security as Cudgel
New Strategy on Social Security
With Some Risk, Bush Officials Invoke Clinton, Moynihan
By Jonathan WeismanWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, January 24, 2005; Page A03
With their push to restructure Social Security off to a rocky start, Bush administration officials have begun citing two Democrats -- former President Bill Clinton and the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- to bolster their claims that the retirement system is in crisis.
But the gambit carries some risk, Bush supporters say. Clinton's repeated calls during his second term to "save Social Security first" were specifically to thwart what President Bush ultimately did: cut taxes based on federal budget surplus projections. Likewise, internal Treasury Department documents indicate that Moynihan, a New York Democrat who was co-chairman of Bush's 2001 Social Security Commission, expressed misgivings about the president's push to partially privatize Social Security.
Nonetheless, White House officials -- and some Democrats -- say invoking Clinton and Moynihan could help move the Social Security debate beyond the question of whether there is a "crisis" in the system, and on to what to do about it.
"As we move forward with our efforts to talk about the problem and the need for reform, administration officials are talking about what leaders of the Democrat Party have said about the problem," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.
In public speeches recently, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten, both cited the same passage of a 1998 Clinton speech at Georgetown University.
"This fiscal crisis in Social Security affects every generation," Clinton said in the speech.
But neither Mankiw nor Bolten cited another passage from the same address: "Before we spend a penny on new programs or tax cuts, we should save Social Security first. I think it should be the driving principle . . . Do not have a tax cut. Do not have a spending program that deals with that surplus. Save Social Security first."
"The Bush White House should have read Clinton's speeches before they squandered the Clinton surplus," said Bruce Reed, who was Clinton's domestic policy chief at the time of the speech.
When Bush entered office, conservatives active in the Social Security debate, including Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) and Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute, urged him to tackle Social Security while the government projected a 10-year, $5.6 trillion budget surplus, before pursuing his 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax cut. But Bush signed five tax cuts in four years, totaling nearly $1.9 trillion over the next decade.
"In 2001 we faced a recession, an economy declining, and the president was concerned about people needing work," Buchan said, explaining why Bush pushed his tax cut first.
Moreover, Clinton never proposed diverting Social Security taxes from current beneficiaries to private investment accounts, as Bush has suggested, Clinton aides said. Instead, he proposed using the surplus to finance personal savings accounts on top of the Social Security system, said Jeffrey B. Liebman, a Harvard University economist who helped draft Clinton's Social Security plans.
"President Clinton did believe it was better for the country to act early on Social Security by increasing savings and protecting Social Security's guaranteed benefit structure," said Gene B. Sperling, who directed Clinton's National Economic Council during the Social Security push. "Clinton never suggested that the Social Security solvency challenge required radical restructuring."
Some Bush supporters said enlisting Clinton's words posed a more basic risk: "He's alive and well and able to reinterpret his comments at any point," said David C. John, a Social Security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Moynihan died in 2003. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow invoked his memory Thursday in a Wall Street Journal column. But documents from the Social Security Commission, leaked by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill, indicate that Moynihan was ambivalent.
An Oct. 22, 2001, memo from Treasury economic policy aide Kent Smetters to O'Neill said Moynihan backed a Social Security restructuring plan that would layer small personal investment accounts on top of the existing Social Security system rather than diverting taxes from the system. Under the Moynihan approach, individuals could contribute an additional 1 percent of their earnings into an investment account, which would then be matched by the federal government from general tax revenue.
That "add-on" approach has become mainstream policy for the Democratic Party, but it is a major departure from the approach Bush has embraced.
Moreover, "Moynihan has expressed a considerable amount of frustration that he is not being allowed to control the agenda and, in particular, that the White House and Commission Staff are controlling the agenda to a large extent," said the memo, posted on the Internet by O'Neill biographer Ron Suskind.
"Moynihan was always a believer in incrementalism," said Smetters, now at the University of Pennsylvania. "He believed that once people got used to ownership, used to the accounts, they would want more of a good thing."
Former representative Timothy J. Penny of Minnesota, another Democratic member of the commission, said the add-on approach was discussed but members understood that Bush wanted them to carve individual accounts out of existing Social Security taxes.
Besides, said University of Pennsylvania professor Olivia S. Mitchell, another Democrat on the commission, "Moynihan signed the report like everyone else," and two of the commission's three recommendations favored significant partial privatization.
Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the administration's use of Clinton and Moynihan will have little impact on the debate anyway.
Clinton, he said, "has no public office, no legislative role in Social Security," he said. "Pat Moynihan has passed away"
"If you're talking about bipartisanship, you have to be talking to people who are alive and elected, who can reach across the aisle to you," Rangel said
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31333-2005Jan23.html?referrer=email
Backers of Gay Marriage Ban Use Social Security as Cudgel
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
ASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
The move came as Senate Republicans vowed on Monday to reintroduce the proposed amendment, which failed in the Senate last year by a substantial margin. Party leaders, who left it off their list of priorities for the legislative year, said they had no immediate plans to bring it to the floor because they still lacked the votes for passage.
But the coalition that wrote the letter, known as the Arlington Group, is increasingly impatient.
In a confidential letter to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, the group said it was disappointed with the White House's decision to put Social Security and other economic issues ahead of its paramount interest: opposition to same-sex marriage.
The letter, dated Jan. 18, pointed out that many social conservatives who voted for Mr. Bush because of his stance on social issues lack equivalent enthusiasm for changing the retirement system or other tax issues. And to pass to pass any sweeping changes, members of the group argue, Mr. Bush will need the support of every element of his coalition.
"We couldn't help but notice the contrast between how the president is approaching the difficult issue of Social Security privatization where the public is deeply divided and the marriage issue where public opinion is overwhelmingly on his side," the letter said. "Is he prepared to spend significant political capital on privatization but reluctant to devote the same energy to preserving traditional marriage? If so it would create outrage with countless voters who stood with him just a few weeks ago, including an unprecedented number of African-Americans, Latinos and Catholics who broke with tradition and supported the president solely because of this issue."
The letter continued, "When the administration adopts a defeatist attitude on an issue that is at the top of our agenda, it becomes impossible for us to unite our movement on an issue such as Social Security privatization where there are already deep misgivings."
The letter also expressed alarm at recent comments President Bush made to The Washington Post, including his statement that "nothing will happen" on the marriage amendment for now because many senators did not see the need for it.
"We trust that you can imagine our deep disappointment at the defeatist position President Bush demonstrated" in the interview, the group wrote. "He even declined to answer a simple question about whether he would use his bully pulpit to overcome this Senate foot-dragging."
The letter also noted that in an interview before the election Mr. Bush "appeared to endorse civil unions" for same-sex couples.
The group asked Mr. Rove to designate "a top level" official to coordinate opposition to same-sex marriage, as a show of commitment.
Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, said on Monday that "the president was simply talking about a situation that exists in the Senate, not about his personal commitment or his willingness to continue to push this issue." Mr. Duffy said the "president remains very committed to a marriage amendment" and added, "We always welcome suggestions from our friends."
Some Senate Republican leaders were not optimistic on Monday about the amendment's prospects this year.
"I think if we had the vote right now we'd come up short," said Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who is a member of the leadership and one of the amendment's most vocal backers in Congress. "We'd like to bring it up when we have the best possible chance of getting it passed."
The members of the coalition that wrote the letter are some of Mr. Bush's most influential conservative Christian supporters, and include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Family Association, Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich.
Several members of the group said that not long ago, many of their supporters were working or middle class, members of families that felt more allegiance to the Democratic Party because of programs like Social Security before gravitating to the Republican Party as it took up more cultural conservative issues over the last 20 years.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, declined to talk about the letter, but said, "The enthusiasm to get behind his proposals is going to require that he get behind the issues that really motivated social conservative voters."
Asked to estimate the level of discontent with the White House among the group on a scale from one to 10, Mr. Perkins put it at 8.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/politics/25marriage.html?th
prec: kelhman
With Some Risk, Bush Officials Invoke Clinton, Moynihan
By Jonathan WeismanWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, January 24, 2005; Page A03
With their push to restructure Social Security off to a rocky start, Bush administration officials have begun citing two Democrats -- former President Bill Clinton and the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- to bolster their claims that the retirement system is in crisis.
But the gambit carries some risk, Bush supporters say. Clinton's repeated calls during his second term to "save Social Security first" were specifically to thwart what President Bush ultimately did: cut taxes based on federal budget surplus projections. Likewise, internal Treasury Department documents indicate that Moynihan, a New York Democrat who was co-chairman of Bush's 2001 Social Security Commission, expressed misgivings about the president's push to partially privatize Social Security.
Nonetheless, White House officials -- and some Democrats -- say invoking Clinton and Moynihan could help move the Social Security debate beyond the question of whether there is a "crisis" in the system, and on to what to do about it.
"As we move forward with our efforts to talk about the problem and the need for reform, administration officials are talking about what leaders of the Democrat Party have said about the problem," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.
In public speeches recently, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten, both cited the same passage of a 1998 Clinton speech at Georgetown University.
"This fiscal crisis in Social Security affects every generation," Clinton said in the speech.
But neither Mankiw nor Bolten cited another passage from the same address: "Before we spend a penny on new programs or tax cuts, we should save Social Security first. I think it should be the driving principle . . . Do not have a tax cut. Do not have a spending program that deals with that surplus. Save Social Security first."
"The Bush White House should have read Clinton's speeches before they squandered the Clinton surplus," said Bruce Reed, who was Clinton's domestic policy chief at the time of the speech.
When Bush entered office, conservatives active in the Social Security debate, including Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) and Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute, urged him to tackle Social Security while the government projected a 10-year, $5.6 trillion budget surplus, before pursuing his 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax cut. But Bush signed five tax cuts in four years, totaling nearly $1.9 trillion over the next decade.
"In 2001 we faced a recession, an economy declining, and the president was concerned about people needing work," Buchan said, explaining why Bush pushed his tax cut first.
Moreover, Clinton never proposed diverting Social Security taxes from current beneficiaries to private investment accounts, as Bush has suggested, Clinton aides said. Instead, he proposed using the surplus to finance personal savings accounts on top of the Social Security system, said Jeffrey B. Liebman, a Harvard University economist who helped draft Clinton's Social Security plans.
"President Clinton did believe it was better for the country to act early on Social Security by increasing savings and protecting Social Security's guaranteed benefit structure," said Gene B. Sperling, who directed Clinton's National Economic Council during the Social Security push. "Clinton never suggested that the Social Security solvency challenge required radical restructuring."
Some Bush supporters said enlisting Clinton's words posed a more basic risk: "He's alive and well and able to reinterpret his comments at any point," said David C. John, a Social Security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Moynihan died in 2003. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow invoked his memory Thursday in a Wall Street Journal column. But documents from the Social Security Commission, leaked by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill, indicate that Moynihan was ambivalent.
An Oct. 22, 2001, memo from Treasury economic policy aide Kent Smetters to O'Neill said Moynihan backed a Social Security restructuring plan that would layer small personal investment accounts on top of the existing Social Security system rather than diverting taxes from the system. Under the Moynihan approach, individuals could contribute an additional 1 percent of their earnings into an investment account, which would then be matched by the federal government from general tax revenue.
That "add-on" approach has become mainstream policy for the Democratic Party, but it is a major departure from the approach Bush has embraced.
Moreover, "Moynihan has expressed a considerable amount of frustration that he is not being allowed to control the agenda and, in particular, that the White House and Commission Staff are controlling the agenda to a large extent," said the memo, posted on the Internet by O'Neill biographer Ron Suskind.
"Moynihan was always a believer in incrementalism," said Smetters, now at the University of Pennsylvania. "He believed that once people got used to ownership, used to the accounts, they would want more of a good thing."
Former representative Timothy J. Penny of Minnesota, another Democratic member of the commission, said the add-on approach was discussed but members understood that Bush wanted them to carve individual accounts out of existing Social Security taxes.
Besides, said University of Pennsylvania professor Olivia S. Mitchell, another Democrat on the commission, "Moynihan signed the report like everyone else," and two of the commission's three recommendations favored significant partial privatization.
Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the administration's use of Clinton and Moynihan will have little impact on the debate anyway.
Clinton, he said, "has no public office, no legislative role in Social Security," he said. "Pat Moynihan has passed away"
"If you're talking about bipartisanship, you have to be talking to people who are alive and elected, who can reach across the aisle to you," Rangel said
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31333-2005Jan23.html?referrer=email
Backers of Gay Marriage Ban Use Social Security as Cudgel
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
ASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
The move came as Senate Republicans vowed on Monday to reintroduce the proposed amendment, which failed in the Senate last year by a substantial margin. Party leaders, who left it off their list of priorities for the legislative year, said they had no immediate plans to bring it to the floor because they still lacked the votes for passage.
But the coalition that wrote the letter, known as the Arlington Group, is increasingly impatient.
In a confidential letter to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, the group said it was disappointed with the White House's decision to put Social Security and other economic issues ahead of its paramount interest: opposition to same-sex marriage.
The letter, dated Jan. 18, pointed out that many social conservatives who voted for Mr. Bush because of his stance on social issues lack equivalent enthusiasm for changing the retirement system or other tax issues. And to pass to pass any sweeping changes, members of the group argue, Mr. Bush will need the support of every element of his coalition.
"We couldn't help but notice the contrast between how the president is approaching the difficult issue of Social Security privatization where the public is deeply divided and the marriage issue where public opinion is overwhelmingly on his side," the letter said. "Is he prepared to spend significant political capital on privatization but reluctant to devote the same energy to preserving traditional marriage? If so it would create outrage with countless voters who stood with him just a few weeks ago, including an unprecedented number of African-Americans, Latinos and Catholics who broke with tradition and supported the president solely because of this issue."
The letter continued, "When the administration adopts a defeatist attitude on an issue that is at the top of our agenda, it becomes impossible for us to unite our movement on an issue such as Social Security privatization where there are already deep misgivings."
The letter also expressed alarm at recent comments President Bush made to The Washington Post, including his statement that "nothing will happen" on the marriage amendment for now because many senators did not see the need for it.
"We trust that you can imagine our deep disappointment at the defeatist position President Bush demonstrated" in the interview, the group wrote. "He even declined to answer a simple question about whether he would use his bully pulpit to overcome this Senate foot-dragging."
The letter also noted that in an interview before the election Mr. Bush "appeared to endorse civil unions" for same-sex couples.
The group asked Mr. Rove to designate "a top level" official to coordinate opposition to same-sex marriage, as a show of commitment.
Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, said on Monday that "the president was simply talking about a situation that exists in the Senate, not about his personal commitment or his willingness to continue to push this issue." Mr. Duffy said the "president remains very committed to a marriage amendment" and added, "We always welcome suggestions from our friends."
Some Senate Republican leaders were not optimistic on Monday about the amendment's prospects this year.
"I think if we had the vote right now we'd come up short," said Senator Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican who is a member of the leadership and one of the amendment's most vocal backers in Congress. "We'd like to bring it up when we have the best possible chance of getting it passed."
The members of the coalition that wrote the letter are some of Mr. Bush's most influential conservative Christian supporters, and include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Family Association, Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich.
Several members of the group said that not long ago, many of their supporters were working or middle class, members of families that felt more allegiance to the Democratic Party because of programs like Social Security before gravitating to the Republican Party as it took up more cultural conservative issues over the last 20 years.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, declined to talk about the letter, but said, "The enthusiasm to get behind his proposals is going to require that he get behind the issues that really motivated social conservative voters."
Asked to estimate the level of discontent with the White House among the group on a scale from one to 10, Mr. Perkins put it at 8.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/25/politics/25marriage.html?th
prec: kelhman
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