Rhetoric Rules Debate on Social Security Reform

Bush and many Republicans long have advocated the creation of individual retirement accounts using part of workers' Social Security taxes to allow people to invest in stocks and bonds on their own. Variations on this theme would divide worker contributions between the existing Social Security system and private investment accounts, with some curbs on how the money is invested.

Kerry and many Democrats believe the current system is in need of repair, not renovation.

Democrats argue there's no need to put retirement benefits at risk in the stock market if the system can be fixed, while Republicans and critics of the current system say debating the difference in the reports fails to address Social Security's fundamental flaws. Critics say the report's finding that Social Security will need more money from the general revenue fund by 2019 is more important, because that will siphon money from Medicare and Medicaid.

Expect to hear from each side frequently in the run-up to the July 26 start of the Democratic National Convention and the Aug. 30 kickoff of the Republican National Convention.

"The latest talk from behind the scenes in Washington is that President Bush will begin laying out a second-term agenda from the convention on," says Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that supports private retirement accounts. "I think Bush needs a big domestic idea, and I think he wants to do this. If he wants to do this in 2005, he needs to talk about it now."

There is currently a host of reform proposals in various stages of legislative development, led by a trio of models from the Bush administration, which tackled the issue through the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security.