Wide Divide On Social Security

Party Differences Hardening On Social Security; Dems Pledge Fight

(CBS/AP)  But efforts to do so are hampered by the same Democratic opposition and by skittishness among several members of the GOP's own rank and file. After weeks of insisting that any legislation would have to be bipartisan, Grassley said recently he might try to craft a measure that had only Republican support.

Even that may prove difficult, given the breakdown of votes on the committee, although he said after the day's session he remained determined to try.

"We need to start somewhere and we don't need to have unanimity among Republicans to start," said Sen. Craig Thomas of Wyoming, one of 10 Republicans on the panel, which has eight Democrats.

Grassley gaveled the meeting to order with a reference to the rally that Bush's opponents organized for later in the day.

"Outside the hearing room today, we have political theater and dramatic attempts to polarize Social Security along partisan lines," he said.

"I ask my fellow committee members to resist the temptation to allow such theatrics to pervade this hearing room. If there is ever going to be a bipartisan consensus for reform, the process must begin in this committee, and there's no time like the present to get started."

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., responded moments later by agreeing changes were needed to assure that Social Security can pay full promised benefits after 2052. "But we do not need to privatize Social Security to save it," he said.

And Democrats' tempers flared at the rally on Capitol Hill outside the hearing chambers, Plante reports.

"If [the president] thought there was no fight left in the Democratic Party, by golly, he was sadly mistaken!" Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who lost to Bush in the 2004 election, said it was the president who had failed to put a plan on the table. Referring to a proposal he made during his bid for the White House, Kerry called for repealing Bush-era tax cuts for the nation's top wage earners to help shore up Social Security's finances.

"We're going to do something," he said of the need to address Social Security funding difficulties. "We're not going to do nothing."

Grassley called the hearing in an attempt to review competing proposals that would make Social Security permanently solvent. Three of the alternatives call for personal accounts, while a fourth does not.

For much of the hearing, though, the witnesses were foils for senators seeking to elicit information favorable to their own views. Democrats prodded one witness to verify that a plan similar to Bush's would result in substantial new federal borrowing. Republicans called on another witness to affirm that without changes, Social Security would not be able to pay full benefits beginning at mid-century.