Social Security Panel Called to Suggest Reforms

President Bush assembled a new Social Security commission on Wednesday that is friendly to the idea of investing in the stock market, saying younger workers “might as well be saving their money in their mattresses” with the current plan’s structure.

“And the return will only decline further, maybe even below zero if we do not proceed with reform,” Bush said.

Democrats charge that the commission of eight Republicans and eight Democrats was created to give Bush political cover with a predetermined outcome and a bipartisan label.

Bush’s panel is the eighth special council created in the last 20 years to study Social Security. Only one resulted in any major changes.

The makeup of the Social Security commission was by design, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

“It’s been too often, not always, but too often in the history of Social Security that commissions did gather dust or they did create gridlock,” he said. “The president wants to break that pattern this year.”

Co-chairmen are former Democratic New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who supports private investment accounts, and Richard Parsons, AOL Time Warner’s co-chief operating officer, a Republican.

The seven Republican members are:

* Former Bush campaign aide John Cogan of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

* Robert Deposada, Hispanic Business Roundtable executive director.

* Former Rep. Bill Frenzel (R-Minn.).

* Gwendolyn King, Social Security commissioner under President Reagan.

* Gerry Parsky, former Treasury assistant secretary under President Ford.

* Thomas Saving, Texas A&M; University Private Enterprise Research Center director and Social Security trustee.

* Carolyn L. Weaver, resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.

The seven Democratic members are:

* Sam Beard, former aide to the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) and founder of Economic Security 2000, a nonprofit Social Security overhaul group.

* Estelle James, World Bank consultant.

* Robert Johnson, Black Entertainment Television chairman.

* Robert Pozen, Fidelity Investments.

* Olivia Mitchel, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

* Former Rep. Tim Penny of Minnesota, co-director of the Humphrey Institute Policy Forum at the University of Minnesota.

* Fidel Vargas, Reliant Equity Investors vice president and former mayor of Baldwin Park, Calif.

The commission is to present its findings in the fall and should include a plan for private accounts, Bush said. Any recommendation would be subject to congressional approval, though Congress isn’t likely to tackle the issue right away.

Only the 1982 National Commission on Social Security Reform headed by Alan Greenspan resulted in changes to the plan, according to the Social Security Administration. That commission expanded the plan to cover federal employees and instituted a gradual retirement age increase from 65 to 67.