 | washingtonpost.com
Semantics Shape Social Security Debate
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
President Bush is trying to keep the word "private" from going public.
As the two parties brace for the coming debate over restructuring
Social Security, polls and focus groups for both sides have shown that
voters -- especially older ones, who vote in disproportionately heavy
numbers -- distrust any change that has the word "private" attached to
it.
The White House has a logical idea: Don't use the word. This is
difficult because, after all, they would be "private" accounts, and
Bush's plan would "partially privatize" Social Security.
So Bush and his supporters have started using "personal accounts"
instead of "private accounts" to refer to his plan. Republican
officials have begun calling journalists to complain about references
to "private accounts," even though Bush called them that three times in
a speech last fall.
Michael D. Tanner, director of the Social Security project at the
libertarian Cato Institute, said "the term 'privatization' always polls
about 20 points lower than a description of it." "The problem is that
there is no good term," Tanner said. "People have tried 'modernization'
and 'personalization.' They all sink like a rock."
Reflecting the new premium being placed on language, Bush turned
prickly a week ago Friday during an interview with The Washington Post
aboard Air Force One when he was asked if he would talk to Senate
Democrats about his "privatization plan."
"You mean the personal savings accounts?" the president scolded.
Bush generally refers to "personal accounts" but said during a
September speech at a Republican fundraiser in Washington that he
wanted to offer younger workers "a private account that they can call
their own, a private account they can pass on to the next generation,
and a private account that government can't take away."
Republican officials began warning their congressional candidates
against using any form of the word "private" in 2002, when Democrats
seized on it to argue that the addition of individual investment
accounts to Social Security would jeopardize the nation's safety net.
Republicans have not always resisted the term. Cato, an early champion
of adding individually controlled accounts to Social Security, started
a policy incubator called the "Project on Social Security
Privatization" in 1995. After complaints from Republican leaders, the
name was changed in 2002 to the "Project on Social Security Choice."
Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, said any form of the word
"private" suggests "a radical change to Social Security."
"People have seen lots of risks and rip-offs occur, and the virtue of
Social Security is that it has been a . . . very reliable system for a
very long time," Garin said......
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