Democrats Give a ‘No’ to Privatization

If President Bush was hoping that his State of the Union address would win Democratic support for his second-term agenda -- including his plan for overhauling Social Security -- he appeared to have made little progress.

Congressional Democrats cried “No!” each time Bush said that the Social Security system was bankrupt. They sat stonily when he suggested allowing younger workers to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in private accounts.

And after the speech was over, they attacked him for failing to offer a “clear plan” for ending the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

“I believe we need to begin to talk about an exit strategy, and I didn’t hear that tonight,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas.

Democrats have shown in recent weeks that they don’t intend to back down on challenging Bush -- and might even take a more aggressive posture toward him -- despite the party’s losses in last fall’s elections.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, joined by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, delivered a nationally televised response to Bush’s speech.

Reid pledged to work with the president “when we believe the president is on the right track.... But when he gets off track, we will be there to hold him accountable.”

So far, Democrats have fought Bush’s nominations of national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to be secretary of State and White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to be attorney general. Rice has won confirmation in the Republican-controlled Senate and Gonzales is expected to be confirmed today.

Reid has declared that no Senate Democrat will back Bush’s proposal for Social Security investment accounts. And Democrats have signaled they will continue to oppose the confirmation of judicial nominees whom they regard as too conservative. Ten of the president’s 34 appellate court nominations were blocked by Democratic filibusters during the last congressional session.

“Beyond any doubt, the Democrats are signaling that they intend to contest President Bush on big issues, especially Social Security and Iraq,” said Donald F. Kettl, a University of Pennsylvania political scientist.

“On Social Security, they smell blood in the water and will circle like sharks, intent on nipping away pieces of Bush’s plan and hoping to take it down,” he said. “With even fellow Republicans nervous about the plan, they think they can stop his signature second-term plan. And if they can do that, they believe they can send him quacking quickly back to Crawford as a lame duck.”

And although Democrats pledge to hold Bush accountable, Kettl said, “it’s not clear they have the strategy or the muscle to do so.”

Reid likened Bush’s speech to the movie “Groundhog Day” -- “the same old ideology that we’ve heard before, over and over and over again.”

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said: “When it came to specifics of a domestic program, they just weren’t there.”

Democrats reserved their sharpest criticism for Bush’s Social Security proposal.

Bush has said that allowing workers to put a portion of their payroll taxes in personal investment accounts will fatten their retirement nest eggs while shoring up the Social Security system. Democrats have said that the proposal will deplete the Social Security trust fund of money, forcing the government to cut retirement benefits or go deeper into debt.

“I had no idea W stood for Wall Street,” said Rep. Louise McIntosh Slaughter of New York.

Sen. Charles Schumer, also of New York, declared: “We will not allow the president to play retirement roulette and turn Social Security into social insecurity.”

Rep. John D. Dingell of Michigan said that Bush’s Social Security proposal reminded him of “that New Coke from the 1980s -- the name on the can was the same, but nobody could stomach what was inside.”

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who represents a state that Bush won in the presidential election, said he needed to hear more specifics. “I haven’t gotten the details,” said Nelson, who plans to meet with Bush on Friday during the president’s visit to the state to garner support for his Social Security proposal.

Several Democrats said that Bush failed to offer any details to convince them that his proposal would not lead to cuts in Social Security benefits or increase the government’s debt. Because payroll taxes from today’s workers finance the benefits for today’s retirees, critics of Bush’s plan say the government would have to borrow as much as $2 trillion over the next decade to replace the money diverted to private accounts.

“President Bush delivered a speech with lots of applause lines, but I wonder how much applause he would have gotten had he mentioned the true costs of his policies,” said Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, which will write Social Security legislation.

Reid equated Bush’s proposal to “taking Social Security’s guarantee and gambling with it ... and that’s coming from a senator who represents Las Vegas.”