President Bush's aides are reviving his long-shelved plan to let workers divert some Social Security taxes into stocks as a reelection issue, gambling that market drops have not soured voters on the politically risky idea.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have refused to touch his 2000 campaign proposal to overhaul the nation's largest domestic program, and some of his allies remain leery of pushing an issue that Democrats have long used to woo senior citizens by charging "privatization."
Bush aides said he will make the longtime conservative goal more palatable by discussing changes to Social Security as part of a set of plans encouraging what he calls an "ownership society" in which minorities receive help buying homes, seniors have a choice of health care, and employees control part of their retirement savings.
"We are going to do everything we can to encourage a healthy public dialogue about Social Security reform," a senior administration official said. "The politics works on this because it is accepted in the general public that Social Security has a long-term solvency problem."
A Republican official said the White House has signaled Capitol Hill that Bush's campaign "wants to spend a lot of money" on advertising promoting the issue.
A presidential adviser said Bush is intent on being able to say that reworking Social Security "is part of my mandate" if he wins. Bush made modernization of the retirement system one of the six core issues of his campaign in 2000, but he has said little about it since a commission he had appointed issued an inconclusive report at the end of 2001.
Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who worked for Vice President Al Gore in 2000, said Bush was able to wage this debate somewhat theoretically last time because he was a challenger. "This time the debate will be very different and much more concrete," he said. "It's a high-risk strategy. I hope they do it."
The commission recommended three approaches that would each cost at least $2 trillion, to make up for the money that would need to be paid in benefits but would no longer be coming from younger workers. Bush had said during his campaign that he planned to use the budget surplus, now-depleted, to cover those costs.
The new plans show that Bush's strategists intend to use an aggressive, high-stakes approach, even though the country remains evenly divided and the president has slipped considerably in the polls from his wartime dominance.
Aides said Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser, has argued internally and to the president's key supporters that recent polling and election results show that changing Social Security is no longer the "third rail of American politics" -- death to those who touch it. These aides pointed to the victories in last year's midterm elections by five GOP candidates for the Senate -- Norm Coleman (Minn.), Elizabeth Dole (N.C.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) and James M. Talent (R-Mo.) -- who made personal retirement accounts a prominent part of their platforms.
"Those that were dealing with the issue won handily," the administration official said. Democrats said the candidates emphasized investment choice and the opportunity for gains, rather than the trade-offs or the possibility of losses.
The public groundwork for Bush's new campaign on the issue began this week. After consulting the White House and the Social Security Administration, Graham on Tuesday proposed a Social Security Solvency and Modernization Act that would keep people 55 and older in Social Security with no changes but would allow workers 54 and younger to contribute as much as 4 percent of their payroll taxes, up to $1,300 a year, into a personal account they would own and control.
White House officials said Congress is unlikely to move on the issue next year, but they noted that bills such as Graham's will generate debate and serve as a basis for the proposal Bush will advocate on the stump.
The Social Security Administration plans town meetings with bipartisan pairs of lawmakers next year to call attention to the solvency problems that Social Security will face with the baby-boom retirements and to try to make the case for "the importance of addressing those challenges sooner rather than later," spokesman Jim Courtney said.
