Bush Calls Dukakis’ Social Security Barbs Demagogic

Vice President George Bush, responding Thursday to Michael S. Dukakis’ questioning of his commitment to maintaining the strength of the Social Security program, accused the Democratic presidential nominee of pursuing a demagogic appeal and pledged to keep the pension system sound.

At a news conference in this working-class suburb north of Detroit and at rallies here, in St. Charles, Mo., and in Grand Rapids, Mich., he kept up a sharp, daylong attack.

Broadening his focus on Dukakis’ membership in the American Civil Liberties Union, the vice president said throughout the day that he wants to know whether Dukakis, if elected, would heed the advice of the ACLU in making Supreme Court nominations.

“I wouldn’t take their advice on that,” he said, adding, under questioning at the news conference: “All he has to do is say: ‘No, they won’t have any influence on it.’ ”

Variety of Issues

The 25-minute news conference was the first Bush has held in 13 days and covered a wide variety of issues.

Questions about Social Security are consistently some of the most sensitive that arise in a presidential campaign, and Dukakis has been hammering Bush throughout the week in an effort to raise doubts about whether the vice president, if elected, would seek to use the anticipated surplus in the pension system to pay for other government programs in a period of difficult federal budget deficits.

“I have said: ‘Keep the Social Security trust fund sound,’ ” Bush said at the news conference, held before he spoke to students at the Macomb County Community College.

“You know, it’s this time of year. It’s a little early. Normally the attacks on Social Security start a little later. Normally they begin about three weeks before the election.”

“I was a little surprised to see this demagoguery from the man who had exactly the same position as the President had on that one-year slipping of the COLAs,” Bush said.

This was a reference to what he said was a Dukakis vote at a meeting of the National Governors’ Assn. that endorsed a one-year freeze in an annual cost-of-living increase in Social Security payments that was passed by the Senate in 1985, with Bush casting a tie-breaking vote. A public outcry ensued, the White House backed down, and the freeze never became law.

“I will not permit it to be raided for social spending programs,” Bush said of the Social Security trust fund, the government account to which workers and employers contribute and which pays the benefits of the pension system. Indeed, by law the money can only be used to pay the benefits and run the Social Security system.

In other areas, Bush declined to say that he would balance the budget one year after taking office or to say when the budget would be balanced, and said he opposed penalizing women who have abortions, if the procedure is outlawed, because penalties would not be a deterrent.

Responding to a question, Bush said he is opposed to allowing gay couples to adopt children because “a child should be placed in a home with a mother and a father--much more love in a situation like that, lasting love.”

Throughout the day, Bush tried to hitch his campaign to the soaring space shuttle Discovery, but he still spent much of the day with his feet firmly planted in tough-sounding, street-level politics.

He completed his speech at the rally in St. Charles, a St. Louis suburb, at the very moment the shuttle’s boosters were igniting at the Kennedy Space Center. Just as he was leaving a makeshift stage two minutes after the launch, he returned to the microphone to announce jubilantly:

“I thought you might be interested. The shuttle was launched successfully, and America is back in space. Great day. A wonderful day, and we are going to keep the edge in space. We’re back. America is back.”