Social Security Issue Off Limits

Oct. 30, 2002 -- In the presidential election year of 2000, candidates on both sides of the aisle agreed: Social Security is in trouble. Their solutions, however, were dramatically different.

Barnstorming the campaign trail, then-Gov. George W. Bush uttered the word many Republican congressional candidates now dare not speak: privatization.

At an early stop in Iowa on Jan. 20, 2000, candidate Bush assured the gathered crowd, "What privatization does is allows the individual worker — his or her choice — to set aside money in a managed account with parameters in the marketplace."

His Democratic opponent, Al Gore, preferred a "lockbox," saying repeatedly on the stump as he did on Oct. 14, 2000, in Detroit, "I believe we need to put Social Security and Medicare in a lockbox … insulate them from the rest of the budget, so money can't be taken out of Social Security or Medicare for anything but Social Security and Medicare."

What's changed?

Tumbling markets, the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent war in Afghanistan obliterated budget surpluses and severely diminished hopes for a Social Security lockbox. Then a dramatic series of corporate collapses made once noble names like Enron and WorldCom infamous, jolting an already shaky economy and renewing critical refrains that privatizing Social Security might only hasten the program's demise.

What hasn't changed is the uncertain future of Social Security and the politics that surround it.

In their 2000 report, the Social Security Administration's Board of Trustees concluded the Social Security system would begin to run deficits, beginning in 2015. And the reason is simple: the baby boomers are retiring. And as they retire, most experts agree the situation will only get worse as the number of workers per retiree continues to diminish.

More Rhetoric Than Solutions

Yet as campaigns heat up in a feisty midterm election, most candidates seem more interested in rhetoric than solutions.

Democrats claim President Bush wants to gamble with Social Security by tossing it into the stock market. A Democratic National Committee fund-raising pitch portrays Bush pushing a young worker and wheelchair-bound retiree down the line of a plummeting stock market. (To see the ad, go to: www.democrats.org/social_insecurity)

The Republicans recently responded in-kind, showing the same retiree being heroically saved by a Superman-clad Bush. (To see the ad, go to: www.gop.com/flash/bushsavestheday)

The war of words has found its way into many of this year's tight Congressional contests and the Republican party warned its candidates attacks would be coming. More specifically, party leaders told their candidates to avoid using one particular word when explaining their position on Social Security: privatization.

Stephen Moore, President of the Club for Growth, worries, "There are dozens of Republican candidates that are wholesale running away from Social Security reform, even denouncing it."

Private Accounts vs. Privatization

Democrats, such as New Hampshire Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen, are blasting their Republican opponents for supporting what they now call private accounts, not privatization.

In an interview with ABCNEWS' Linda Douglass, Shaheen says of her opponent John Sununu, "He hasn't been honest, that what he really supported was private accounts...obligatory private accounts, which is essentially privatization."

Sununu argues word games are not important, only serving to misinform during an important debate, "The worst thing of all from the people who love to use the word privatization is that they are pitting current retirees against our children and grandchildren … scare tactics make it tough to get things done on important issues."

Other Republicans agree with that argument: they call Democrats "scaremongers."

The issue has been playing out in television ads and debates across the country:

In the South Carolina Senate race, Democrat Alex Sanders has an television ad that begins: "Imagine turning your Social Security funds into risky stocks like Enron."

Republican Lindsey Graham, one of the few candidates who has publicly endorsed the idea of privatization, shot back in a television ad of his own, calling Sanders' ads "bogus appeals to emotion that are trying to scare us all to death."

In a public debate on Oct. 14, Elizabeth Dole, Republican candidate for the Senate, took issue with the Social Security ad war in the North Carolina race saying, "A negative ad was run against me … the ad said that I would take away Social Security … there's a looming crisis in Social Security and certainly I would never take one penny from a senior's Social Security … "

Erskine Bowles, Dole's democratic opponent, shot back, "I think that's the very reason we do need to have an honest discussion of the issues. It's very clear that if you take money out of a Social Security trust fund and you put it into private accounts … you have less money to pay the guaranteed benefit."

Congress always pledges to do something to save Social Security. Many complain, however, election year pledges do not often yield concrete solutions. But reality may soon give way to necessity: Social Security reaches insolvency in 13 years — only six more elections from next Tuesday.

ABCNEWS' Linda Douglass and Cathy Porter contributed to this report.