Bush Hits the Road to Sell Overhaul

President Bush launched a revved-up and retooled campaign Friday to promote Social Security restructuring, promising to hit the road for as long as it takes to overcome public skepticism and congressional opposition.

“I like going around the country.... I’m going to keep telling people we’ve got a problem until it sinks in,” Bush told a crowd in Westfield, N.J., the first stop in what the White House was billing as an intensified, two-month sales blitz.

Yet even as Bush embarked on a road tour that would take top administration officials to 60 cities in the next two months, opponents of his proposed overhaul were launching a counter-offensive designed to match the White House event for event, ad for ad and, ultimately, voter for voter.

Bush, who has made Social Security restructuring the signature domestic policy issue of his second term, said it was essential for Congress to take steps this year to address the system’s long-term funding gap -- estimated at $3.7 trillion over 75 years.

“It’s been a great safety net,” Bush said at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., his second stop of the day. “But we’re getting some holes in the safety net, particularly for younger generations of Americans.”

Democrats, who consider the 70-year-old New Deal program a hallmark of their party’s political legacy, appear determined to head off Bush’s proposal to let younger workers divert a portion of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts as part of a broader attempt to the bring the system into balance.

“Yes, Social Security faces long-term challenges,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in a speech on the Senate floor. “We should work together to strengthen Social Security for the long term. But we need to do it right. We should not endanger the valuable legacy that we have built over so many years.”

Although Bush has been plugging his vision of Social Security restructuring since his reelection in November, the administration decided to step up its campaign after recent opinion polls showed support slipping, and Republican lawmakers reported unexpectedly strong opposition in meetings with constituents.

Bush and other top administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, have pledged to promote private accounts in visits to at least 60 cities in 29 states by May 1.

In addition to boosting the intensity of the sales effort, the president appeared to be modifying the message somewhat in response to poll findings and congressional feedback. In Friday’s remarks, for example, he held out private accounts as “an interesting idea” he would like Congress to consider, instead of an essential element of any restructuring program that he would sign into law.

“I think this is an idea worth discussing,” he said. “I put it out there for people to debate and listen to and argue about.... And if somebody’s got some better ideas, I look forward to hearing them.”

Opponents say private accounts would be costly and would do nothing to improve the long-term funding problems facing Social Security. They say the accounts would deprive the government of money it needs to pay benefits to current retirees, forcing it to borrow and add to an already-high federal deficit.

Bush appeared to be aiming his sales pitch at younger Americans who are unsure whether Social Security will be able to pay promised benefits by the time they retire and who are familiar with 401(k) plans and other forms of personal retirement accounts.

“If I were a younger American,” he said in Indiana, “I’d be asking loud and clear, what are you going to do about this train wreck that is headed my way?”

Bush’s appearances Friday were talk show-style “conversations” with small groups of hand-picked experts, retirees and workers -- a friendly format that the president used extensively during his reelection campaign.

Lisa Engler of Westfield, who described herself as a stay-at-home mom, said she was worried that Social Security would not be able to provide traditional guaranteed benefits by the time her children were ready to retire. Bush’s private-account proposal sounded like “a fair and more equitable system,” Engler said.

“Very good,” Bush responded.

In Indiana, Mark and Betty Batterbee of Edwardsburg, Mich., expressed the same concern about the traditional benefits that would be available to their 11 children, 35 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

“When their time comes to retire, apparently there will be none,” said Batterbee, a retired evangelical pastor. “Something has to be done.”

“I appreciate that, Mark,” Bush said. “This is a generational issue.

He added: “Thanks for having all those kids too.”

As the president hit the road, congressional Democrats and other opponents of private accounts cranked up their efforts to counter the administration’s message and preserve the existing structure of Social Security.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sent the president a letter signed by 42 Senate Democrats, urging him to abandon the idea of making private accounts part of any Social Security restructuring plan.

As long as Bush insists on private accounts, the letter said, “it will be impossible to establish the kind of cooperative, bipartisan process we need” to close the retirement system’s long-term funding gap.

The letter underscored the fact that Democrats had the ability to block the president’s Social Security initiative in the Senate, where 60 votes were required to cut off a filibuster. Republicans hold 55 of the chamber’s 100 seats.

Democrats ran radio ads in the two GOP-held congressional districts visited Friday by Bush, targeting Reps. Michael Ferguson of New Jersey and Chris Chocola of Indiana. The ads, paid for by the Democratic National Committee, criticized Bush’s plan as risky and urged voters to call each congressman and “tell him you do not want your benefits cut.”

In addition, Democratic senators held meetings in New York and Philadelphia to assail Bush’s Social Security overhaul plan.

AARP, the 35-million-member seniors organization, held rallies and placed newspaper ads in New Jersey and Indiana, characterizing private investment accounts as an excessively risky solution to Social Security’s long-term financial problems.

Americans United to Protect Social Security, a newly formed coalition representing the AFL-CIO and some 200 other organizations, said it planned to raise at least $25 million to finance an ad campaign. The group said it would organize protests at each stop on the president’s tour, including visits next week to Montgomery, Ala.; Shreveport, La.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Louisville, Ky.

Vieth reported from Indiana and New Jersey and Simon from Washington.