Selling the Social Security Overhaul

Rep. Kevin Brady had come to the senior center in this rural community to talk about the need to make changes in Social Security. But first, he wanted to reassure his audience that the discussion wouldn’t affect them.

And so the Republican congressman held up a photograph of his elderly mother.

“I am never going to do anything to change your Social Security or her Social Security,” he told the 30 people who had come to hear him. “As a son who loves his mother, I’m going to preserve Social Security.”

With members of Congress at home for a weeklong recess, many Republican lawmakers are making similar appeals in town meetings across their districts. Social Security needs changes to avoid financial ruin, they are saying, but seniors need not worry. Their benefits will be protected.

But as Brady and others are finding out, seniors are feeling uncertain nonetheless. And that could spell trouble for the push by President Bush and Republican leaders to restructure the massive retirement program, allowing workers under age 55 to divert some of their Social Security taxes away from the government and into private investment accounts.

“I wouldn’t want to invest my retirement in the stock market. It’s too risky,” said Margaret Pellerin, 75, after attending the session in Bridge City, about 100 miles east of Houston in an area dotted with oil refineries.

Pellerin said she and her husband had lost $20,000 in the stock market years ago. “I don’t think kids should take that chance either,” she said.

In Smyrna, Ga., C.W. Driskell, 74, declared himself “not completely sold” on private accounts after a town hall meeting with his congressman, Republican Phil Gingrey.

“Bush is basing the amount of money they’ll earn on what investors made in the ‘90s,” Driskell said. “Those were the good years. I’ve made nothing in stocks in the last five years.”

And in Elkins, W.Va., in a county that Bush won in 2000 and 2004, Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito said after a meeting with 75 constituents at a senior center that she did not sense any consensus on what, if any, changes should be made to Social Security.

“Whether they’re ready for a change, I’m not sure we’re there yet,” said Capito, who has not decided whether to support Bush’s call for private accounts.

A House GOP leadership aide in Washington minimized the concerns expressed by seniors -- a politically important group -- saying that the town hall meetings were the first step in a “long process in making sure everyone is educated in what we’re talking about.”

Bush has cast private accounts as part of a broader effort to shore up the finances of Social Security. He has suggested that this might include raising the retirement age or cutting benefits for future retirees, but he has not endorsed any option.

Since he began pushing for private accounts, the president has tried to head off potential opposition from older Americans. “I have a message for every American who is 55 or older,” he said during his State of the Union address this month. “Do not let anyone mislead you. For you, the Social Security system will not change in any way.”

Capito struck a similar theme Tuesday, telling her constituents: “If you’re 55 and older, Social Security will be there for you.”

But Susan A. MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida who has studied voting patterns among seniors, said the anxiety among some was not surprising, given their lifelong experience with political promises. “If you look at the age groups who are more cynical about the words of politicians, it tends to be seniors, because they’ve heard it their whole lifetime,” she said.

McManus said that the anxiety among seniors would make it harder for Bush to persuade Congress to approve his proposed changes to Social Security, “because there already was a great deal of apprehension on the part of [baby] boomers.”

A Newsweek poll this month showed that retirees or those nearing retirement -- people 55 and older -- were the age group most likely to oppose Bush’s Social Security restructuring. Among this group, 45% in the survey opposed Bush’s plan, 22% favored it and 24% were unaware of it.

Seniors’ concerns about the proposed changes come as the AARP, the big seniors’ lobby, is waging a campaign against Bush’s proposal for personal investment accounts.

Brady, who favors Social Security personal investment accounts, acknowledged that seniors were turning out to be the toughest group to convince. “It’s going to take a lot of education to sell our seniors on it,” he said. “It’s just, I think, a general distrust of government.”

Seniors’ concerns have prompted some of Bush’s usually loyal Republican allies to move cautiously on the issue.

Capito said after meeting with her constituents that she remained undecided on what changes should be made to the retirement system. “If anybody tells you that ... I want to privatize Social Security, that person isn’t telling you the truth,” she said.

Among Capito’s constituents who expressed concern about the proposed restructuring was Jim Van Gundy, 66, a retired college professor. He said that Bush was “trying to sell the American people on the notion that Social Security is broken, and only some radical solution will fix it. I think that’s wrong. And I think it’s dishonest.”

Van Gundy said that Bush had acknowledged that private accounts were not a cure-all for the long-term financial problems facing Social Security.

Elsewhere in Elkins, Thomas Wamsley, 68, a retiree who voted for Bush based on his views on “family values,” equated the investment accounts with gambling. He said they were not worth the risk, even for a potentially fatter retirement nest egg.

Arthur G. Hamrick, 74, a retired electrical engineer who voted for Bush, expressed similar concerns. “If you put money into a stock market, and it goes down ... what have you got? You got a whole lot of people who could have nothing,” he said.

Some seniors were receptive to Bush’s proposal.

At Brady’s town hall meeting in Texas, Geraldine Ballard, 63, a homemaker and wife of a retired refinery operator, said she was willing to support the president’s proposal in the interest of her six grandchildren.

“I wonder how they’re going to survive retirement,” Ballard said. “I wonder if they’ll get anything. I’m hoping by that time, plans will have been made to help them. I’m glad we’re talking about it now. They can’t follow our route because there’s not enough money to support everyone. This has got to get fixed.”

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Simon reported from West Virginia and Hart from Texas. Times researcher Jenny Jarvie in Georgia contributed to this report.