On Sunday George W. Bush locked in his position in support of privatizing Social Security. As our profiles have shown, Bush has regularly spoken on the stump in favor of privatization. But Sunday he was speaking to a live national audience in an interview with Tim Russert of NBC's Meet the Press. In the interview Bush said he would consider raising the retirement age as part of a deal that would assure Social Security taxes could be diverted to private accounts for Baby Boomers and those who come after them.
As the attached news stories explain, Bush was so explicit before a national audience that it will be virtually impossible for him to change his position in subsequent debates.
============================================== MSNBC.COM
November 21, 1999
++ excerpted ++
IN ADVANCE of the November 2000 election, Bush aid he would set out “a specific set of principles by which I will be making decisions” on how to keep the federal government’s Social Security and Medicare plans solvent
into the next century. And he provided a preview of those principles during the Sunday morning news program.
First, he said, he would tell Congress that “if I’m the president, all the money that’s supposed to be going to Social Security will be spent on Social Security.”
He also voiced support for plans that would let Americans put some of their Social Security contributions into personal savings accounts.
“People ought to be allowed to invest part of their money in personal savings accounts, in order to make sure there are benefits available in the long term,” he said.
But he also said there should be “guaranteed benefit levels for all
people.” One of the keys to success, he said, would be to strike the right balance between the personal accounts and the guaranteed payouts.
Raising the current eligibility age of 65 “may be an option for the
boomer generation,” he said, but that would have to be worked out as part of a comprehensive plan. He emphasized repeatedly that he was “willing to spend political capital” to hammer out a solution to concerns over the Social Security system’s long-term stability, “even if it means a short-term drop in the polls.”
“The current system can’t get any worse,” he said.
Bush also said he would lay out a pre-election vision of federal spending “pretty soon” that would show “not only how I intend to cut the
taxes but also how I intend to make the budget work.”
>From the Social Security Information Project
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