Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

August 22, 2001 Wednesday REGION EDITION

SECTION: NATIONAL, Pg.A-7

SS PRIVATIZATION POSES POLITICAL RISK FOR GOP

by DICK POLMAN, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

ANALYSIS

In the Bush White House, it has become an article of faith that Republican candidates can now talk openly about overhauling Social Security without being tarred and feathered by an irate electorate.

But that belief may soon be put to the test, in the crucial 2002 congressional elections, and the Democrats are fairly salivating at the prospect.

The Bush team insists that most voters would endorse partially privatizing the retirement program that has cut elderly poverty and cushioned the golden years for millions.

The president's reform task force meets today in furtherance of its belief that Social Security will start going bust in 2016 and that workers should be allowed to invest some of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts. Bush wants to put partial privatization on the congressional agenda next year, and he wants GOP lawmakers to push it. The problem is that the same lawmakers must run for re-election next year.

Contrary to what the White House thinks, there is considerable feeling in Washington that this issue is a probable loser, and that House GOP candidates, struggling to hold their thin majority, would be wise to view it as the political equivalent of nitroglycerin.

Thomas Mann, a nonpartisan government analyst, said yesterday: "It's becoming a very, very difficult issue for Bush and the Republicans. Democrats will have tremendous ammunition -- especially in an environment of declining budget surpluses and a stagnant stock market. In times like that, people tend to yearn for less risk and more guaranteed security."

The latest economic forecasts could heighten the political risks of privatization. Bush, faced with a shrinking surplus, had to deny yesterday that he would be forced to raid the Social Security trust fund in a search for quick cash. This has allowed Democrats to paint Bush as an irresponsible steward of Social Security -- and someone who has yet to put a price tag on his privatization plan.

Even Republicans close to the White House are spare in their praise for privatization. Rich Galen, a party communicator and ex-House aide, said: "If you're running in Florida or Arizona, or anywhere with a large senior population, you clearly have to approach the issue with more sensitivity than you would otherwise."

But White House strategist Karl Rove and his allies in the conservative think tanks are telling nervous Republicans that it is safe to assail the New Deal sacred cow, that there is little to fear but fear itself.

They argue that seniors (who tend to vote more heavily than other voter groups in non-presidential elections) are increasingly affluent and market-savvy and thus less dependent on Social Security than generations past; that the partialprivatization concept plays well in the polls; and that Bush won the presidency last year while openly touting the idea.

Bush, in fact, ran nearly even with Al Gore among voters 65 and older (47 percent to 50 percent, according to national exit exit polls), despite Gore's autumn effort to paint the Bush privatization plan as a menace to Social Security. And in pivotal Florida, Bush actually won older voters, 52 percent to 46 percent.

Amy Walter, a nonpartisan analyst of House races, said the Bush team was right about senior skepticism toward the Democrats -- up to a point. She said Democrats invoked their "sky-is-falling syndrome" in three elections (1996, 1998, 2000), seeking to woo seniors by painting the GOP as a threat to Social Security, yet failed to win control of the House.

"Democrats can't keep using the same argument," she said. "But if there's something going on that makes people catch their breath, that's different. If the economy slows to the point where Bush dips into the [Social Security] fund, Democrats may get more traction [to attack ] privatization.

"As a party, they're still more trusted on Social Security. Potentially, it's still an arrow in their quiver."