WASHINGTON — It was Day 35 of President Bush's 60-day Social Security sales blitz, and Radio America talk show host G. Gordon Liddy was worrying aloud.
Now that Bush had convinced many people that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme headed for collapse, Liddy wondered, why was he was having such a hard time selling his proposal to let younger workers open personal investment accounts?
"We've only been at this for two months," said Allan Hubbard, the president's chief economic advisor and one of 28 administration officials who hit the airwaves this week to talk up restructuring. "It takes time."
Yet as the clock winds down on Bush's self-imposed timetable for promoting his restructuring plan, some conservatives fear he has laid the groundwork for what they regard as the worst possible outcome -- pressure for tax increases and benefit cuts to ensure Social Security's solvency, but a rejection of private accounts as part of the fix.
"There is some worry that just for the sake of having a victory, we'll get a bill that tosses personal accounts over the side," said Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, a conservative advocacy group. "We'll get a combination of tax increases and benefit reductions that won't solve what in our opinion is the fundamental problem, that people don't have individual ownership."
The president and his aides say they are as committed as ever to personal investment accounts, a central element of the "ownership society" agenda regarded by some GOP strategists as a roadmap for ensuring Republican political domination for decades to come.
They said their sales campaign was proceeding according to plan.
"I think we're making progress," Bush told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One after attending the funeral of Pope John Paul II in Rome. "I think slowly but surely, the American people are coming to realize there is a serious problem.
Bush said he understood why some lawmakers were anxious. "It is a tough issue for members [of Congress], for people who've got, you know, a relatively short-term horizon, two-year horizon," he said. "Some of them are worried about elections."
Bush did not mention personal accounts during his airborne news conference. One of the concerns cited by conservatives is that in his recent public remarks, Bush appears to be placing more emphasis on the retirement system's solvency than on the merits of personal accounts.
