WASHINGTON — Sen. Rick Santorum, the conservative from Pennsylvania who ranks third in the Senate Republican leadership, said Sunday that he was willing to discuss increasing the Social Security tax rate as a way of helping to assure the program's solvency.
Santorum said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that raising the Social Security payroll tax might be the price Republicans have to pay for Democratic support for diverting some of the tax revenue to private retirement accounts, as President Bush has proposed.
Santorum's comments on raising the Social Security payroll tax rate come at a time when the public appears to be reacting negatively to Bush's private accounts. In holding out an olive branch to Democrats, Santorum's position went one step further than the president's.
Bush last month said he would consider raising the cap on annual wages subject to the tax, but he has repeatedly ruled out an increase in the tax rate. Social Security is supported by a 12.4% tax, shared equally by employer and employee, on the first $90,000 of annual wages.
Santorum, who is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said the one issue that he would not negotiate with Democrats was his -- and Bush's -- insistence that there be no benefit cuts for today's retirees and workers 55 and older.
"The president has also said we shouldn't have any kind of [tax] rate increase," he said. "But I'm sitting down and negotiating with Democrats in the Senate, and what I've said is I can't expect them to come to the table with everything on the table unless I come to the table with everything on the table."
Santorum's posture differs sharply from that of House Republican leaders, who immediately rejected Bush's suggestion that the wage base was open to discussion. "The Republican House didn't come here to raise taxes," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas said Feb. 18.
Senate Republicans have always been more flexible on the wage cap. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has proposed raising it as high as $200,000 if doing so would get Democratic support in the Senate for diverting some payroll tax revenue to private Social Security accounts that workers could set aside for their own retirement.
