* No direct investment by the Social Security Trust Fund in the stock market. Though Clinton had proposed that idea, Gore has renounced it as politically infeasible.
* No changes in the existing Social Security programs for disabled workers and surviving spouses.
* No increase in the current 12.4% Social Security payroll tax.
* An option for younger workers to divert part of their payroll tax into personal retirement accounts that could be invested in the stock market. Bush did not say how large those accounts should be, but aides have indicated he would support diverting about two percentage points of the existing payroll tax into the voluntary accounts.
Bush said workers would be allowed to invest only "in steady, reliable funds," with day trading prohibited. These accounts aim to both provide more retirement income and ease the long-term pressure on Social Security's finances by allowing workers to tap into the stock market's dynamic growth. Critics like Gore say they would leave workers' retirements too heavily exposed to the fluctuations in the stock market.
And in his final principle, Bush said he would guarantee that all of the anticipated Social Security surplus will be "dedicated to Social Security."
Though politicians in both parties now widely endorse that goal, Bush's precise choice of words actually offers a clue toward one of the sharpest disputes between him and Gore.
Over the next decade, before the baby boom's retirement begins to strain the program, the Social Security system is expected to take in about $2.2 trillion more in taxes than it pays out in benefits.
That surplus is at the heart of Gore's competing plan for stabilizing the system. He says all of it--together with some funds from the anticipated surplus in the federal operating budget--should be used to pay off the $3.5-trillion publicly held national debt by 2013.
Once the debt is paid off, government would save the roughly $230 billion a year it now makes in interest payments; starting in 2011, Gore would transfer those funds directly into the Social Security system. He projects that those massive transfers would allow the system to pay current benefits until 2054.
Bush, by contrast, appears to envision using a significant portion of the Social Security surplus to fund the individual retirement accounts, rather than pay down debt. Bush did not commit to that approach Monday, but Lindsey told reporters "it is certainly a live option."
