Globe Pension Article
The article states that the GOP is trying to use the national crisis in pensions to supplement their efforts by Bush and the GOP to add private accounts to Social Security.
Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has been frustrated by his inability to bring Senate Democrats to the table to talk about plans to change Social Security. This article claims that he believes that by linking problems with the pensions system with the financial problems in Social Security he can force Senate Democrats to start engaging in discussions.
More on the flip
This indicates a shift in strategy for the GOP who are beginning to formulate an argument around the idea that America has a crisis in retirement security, not just Social Security. I think this is potentially very dangerous for the Democrats. See the following excerpt from the Globe article:
Senator Kent Conrad said he has told both Bush and Thomas that he would discuss using private accounts to bolster Social Security if it is part of a broader discussion of retirement savings and looming shortfalls in Medicare and other programs. He said he's looking to establish a working bipartisan group of lawmakers interested in a broad approach to the issue.
''All of them are related, and I don't think there's going to be meaningful progress until all of them are on the table," said Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota. ''You can't get from where we are down to where we need to be with one piece of the puzzle. You need to have much more in play."
A wave of recent defaults on pension plans by big employers -- most notably the bankruptcy of United Airlines, which left longtime workers with a fraction of the retirement funds they had saved over the years -- has intensified interest in legislation to tighten companies' pension contribution requirements and to shore up the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the agency that insures private plans. The agency reported a $23.3 billion deficit at the end of the last fiscal year.
Many Democrats and their labor union constituency are particularly anxious to see companies held accountable for their workers' pensions.
Further on in the article, Rep Richard Neal (D-MA) notes that linking a financial fix for SSI with pension reform is a powerful idea and has him worried as well:
Still, the effort has some Democrats concerned that Republicans will use a pension bill as a Trojan horse for private Social Security accounts.
At a Ways and Means Committee hearing last month, Representative Richard E. Neal asked Thomas to guarantee that GOP leaders would not try to tack on private Social Security accounts to a pension reform bill in a conference committee, a point in the process when Democrats would have little say in the bill's contents. Thomas sidestepped the question, saying he would not ''play gotcha."
Neal, a Springfield Democrat, said, ''We have to be mindful of this. . . . It's hard for us not to be in favor of encouraging vehicles for retirement savings. We all agree the American people don't save enough. But we can't allow a privatization of Social Security."
Incorporating Social Security into a pension bill won't be easy, Republicans acknowledge. Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr. of Florida, a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, said he fears that any broad retirement security package that includes Social Security private investment accounts will be a nonstarter with Democrats and others who want to preserve the existing system.
''The chairman's trying to put together a package that has broad-based appeal, and that can get the job done. But I'm not sure it will," said Shaw, a Republican who has offered his own proposal to create private accounts without cutting benefits. ''I would hope it would, but the thousand-pound gorilla is the Social Security issue. How you can tip the scales on that, I don't know."
The Republicans are re-writing the play book on their Social Security plans. They haven't abandoned their unpopular effort to destry Social SEcurity with private accounts, they are simply shifting tactics to make the Democrats anxiety about pensions fit their agenda for eliminating social programs.