Just last year, congressional Republicans had
a powerful scapegoat in Congress. Anything they couldn’t
accomplish, they blamed on Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle,
D-S.D. Unable to confirm President George W. Bush’s
controversial judicial nominees? It was the
“obstructionist” Daschle’s fault. Couldn’t
get the energy bill through the Senate? Daschle was to blame.
And then Daschle lost his re-election bid last
fall in the same elections that increased Republican numbers in
both the House and the Senate. With his “mandate” from
voters, Bush has decided to pursue an unusually ambitious domestic
agenda in his second term, the centerpiece of which is a partial
dismantling of Social Security to create private investment
accounts.
The biggest obstacle for Bush this year is not
a Democratic congressional leader, however. It’s the
Republicans in Congress who are thinking about their next election,
something Bush doesn’t have to worry about ever again.
“The real fireworks this year will be
between the GOP Congress and the Republican White House,”
says Brad Bannon, a Washington-based Democratic consultant.
“Bush wants to leave a legacy and there’s no better
legacy than to dismantle the FDR New Deal legacy, even if it
destroys the congressional majority in his own party.”
Congressional Republicans,
uncharacteristically, have spoken out against Bush’s Social
Security plan. House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif.,
whose committee will pen reform in the House, told Tim Russert of
NBC on Jan. 23 that Social Security is a “problem,” not
a crisis. And at an earlier forum, he said the White House proposal
would be a “dead horse.”
Thomas is by no means the lone Republican on
this. Last month, Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., told Minnesota Public Radio:
“Right now, to be very candid with you, we don’t have broad
Republican support, let alone bipartisan support for [Bush’s]
plan that was outlined during the campaign.” And Rep. Rob
Simmons, R-Conn., told The Washington Post, “Why stir up a political hornet’s nest
— when there is no urgency?”
Perhaps they are reading the polling numbers
that the president professes to despise. A Newsweek poll released
Feb. 5 shows that 56 percent of voters think creating private
investment accounts — in which Americans can put some of
their Social Security money in the stock market — is
“too big a risk,” and 36 percent of voters think
it’s a “necessary risk.” Quinnipiac
University’s Polling Institute, in a poll released Feb. 2,
found younger voters — who won’t have to worry about
Social Security benefits for decades and vote in low numbers
— support the plan by a 61-35 percent margin. Baby boomers
also back it 53-43 percent, but older voters — who turn out
in high numbers — oppose it 56-34 percent. Senate Finance
Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has warned that public momentum
needs to build for Bush’s plan in the next 90 days, or else
lawmakers will be discouraged “from moving ahead.”
That may not be the only thing discouraging
them, however. Because Bush has not set forward a specific plan for how to go about
rescuing Social Security, he gets credit for raising the problem but
won’t get criticized if nothing happens. His proposal won’t
fail because he didn’t present Congress with a detailed proposal
in the first place. He still gets points for his legacy. It’s a
win-win.
Who will get blamed if nothing happens?
It’s hard for Republicans to blame Democrats, when they
aren’t in the majority (as in 2002) and they don’t have
a leader who’s been pilloried in the press for standing in
the GOP’s way (as in 2004). Instead, voters might take out
their anger on the people who didn’t do anything about the
plan — and with the party’s leader off the ballot, that
means congressional Republicans.
Republican leaders are trying to convince
nervous members that Social Security — long deemed the third
rail of American politics — is safe to touch. Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., isn’t running for re-election
next year, although he does seem to have presidential ambitions,
for which he might receive help from Karl Rove, so look for Frist
to be a loyal soldier. Republican National Committee Chairman Ken
Mehlman has said he thinks Social Security will actually help
candidates next year. He points to Bush and Sens. Elizabeth Dole,
R-N.C., and John Sununu, R-N.H., as examples of candidates who
talked about Social Security and won.
But Social Security was far less a factor in
2004 than issues such as homeland security, Iraq, the economy and
“moral values.” Moreover, Dole had the advantage of
high name recognition following her stints in the Cabinet, Red
Cross and brief presidential campaign. She won by 54 percent, a
slim-enough margin to cause her Democratic opponent to run again in
2004. Sununu, the son of a former governor, won with just 51
percent.
Senate moderates up for re-election next year,
such as Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, are
likely to have plenty of questions about Bush’s plan. Both of
their states voted for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry
last year.
With Democrats united against tinkering with
the New Deal program, Bush will need every Republican to pass
reform.
And, as Bannon points out, the mid-term
election during a president’s second term tends to favor the
party out of power historically. Given the Republican dominance of
Washington in recent years, “the GOP will have to take moral
ownership of their own actions or inactions and will not be able to
pass the proverbial buck to the Democrats anymore.”
Of course, there’s another alternative,
assuming Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security fails.
Because many Americans don’t want to fix Social Security when
it isn’t quite broke, they may breathe a sigh of relief that
nothing happened. In the end, it’s a victory for Democrats,
too. Not only is Social Security safe, but Bush’s lame-duck
status is confirmed. And that makes him much less potent when
he’s campaigning for House and Senate candidates in 2006.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2005.
