http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/politics/campaign/18social.htmlSocial Security Poses Hurdles for President
By ROBIN TONER and DAVID ROSENBAUM
Published: September 18, 2004
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - President Bush's vision of an "ownership society" is built, as much as anything else, on a sweeping promise: that he will transform Social Security so younger workers can divert some of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts.
At a rally in Pennsylvania last week, Mr. Bush declared, as he does at almost every campaign stop nowadays, that "younger workers ought to be able to take some of their taxes and set up a personal savings account, an account that they can call their own, an account that the government cannot take away and an account that they can pass on from one generation to the next."<snip>
But behind the sweeping promise are some harsh political realities that could loom large in this fall's debates and the final clashes of the presidential campaign. Mr. Bush has never proposed a specific plan to reach his goal - and, critics say, for good reasons. With the budget already running large annual deficits, recent estimates of typical plans for private accounts show they would cost as much as $2 trillion over the first 10 years. <snip>
"The president is adamant that we do it in a bipartisan way,'' Mr. Adams said. "And it's such a big issue that it almost requires an election to give the president the political capital and the ability to frame the issue so that he can get his conceptual solution through a divided Congress.''<snip>