Social Security to Become Key Issue

President Clinton speaks about the Social Security system at Georgetown University in Washington in this Feb. 9, 1998 file photo. Three years after the collapse of President Bush's plan for private Social Security accounts, Republican presidential contenders are eager to try again. Not so the Democrats, who gravitate toward increasing payroll taxes on upper-income earners to fix the program's finances. (AP Photo/J.Scott Applewhite, File) (J.scott Applewhite - AP)

WASHINGTON -- Three years after the collapse of President Bush's plan for private Social Security accounts, Republican presidential contenders are eager to try again. Not so the Democrats, who gravitate toward increasing payroll taxes on upper-income earners to fix the program's finances.

With the notable exception of former Sen. Fred Thompson, a Republican, presidential hopefuls in both parties shy away from suggestions that might offend their own primary voters. As a result, bipartisan commissions to resolve the program's long-term financial problems are in. And longer waits for retirement are most definitely out.

Thompson's proposal, by contrast, includes lower-than-promised benefits for future retirees, as well as new private accounts to make Social Security solvent for 75 years. "If somebody's got a better idea let them put it on the table," he said recently, daring his rivals.

Given the divide between the parties, Social Security seems likely to become more of an issue during the 2008 general election than it has been in the campaigns for the presidential nominations.

For now, the most favored suggestion, creation of a bipartisan commission, seems to hold different meanings for different candidates.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, said earlier this fall he favors creation of a commission like the one that hatched a financial fix for the system nearly a quarter century ago. Yet, maneuvering for the support of the conservative Club for Growth, he also said, "I would rule out a tax increase," thus rejecting a key element of the 1983 compromise signed by then-President Reagan.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois are among the Democrats who favor a bipartisan commission. At the same time, they evidently seek to preserve their own maneuvering room.

"I'd take everything off the table until we move toward fiscal responsibility and before we have a bipartisan process," Clinton said in one recent debate, drawing criticism from fellow Democrats who accused her of ducking the issue.

"Everything should be on the table," Obama said over the summer. Now, in a shift in emphasis that has drawn notice by his rivals, he says, "We don't need to cut benefits or raise the retirement age," a position that flatly rules out neither approach.

In cases where Social Security has flared in the campaign, it's served as a stand-in for a broader debate over candidate candor.

"I think the American people ... deserve a president of the United States that they know will tell them the truth, and won't say one thing one time and something different at a different time," former Sen. John Edwards said at a debate on Oct. 30.

That was a barb aimed at Clinton, who had declined to state a position on higher taxes in an earlier debate, then told an Iowa voter she would consider them.