WASHINGTON — When President Bush decided two months ago to step up his campaign for Social Security restructuring, he assembled his Cabinet. Everyone was expected to play a part, Bush said, but the principal pitch man would be Treasury Secretary John W. Snow.
"You need to be the guy on the Hill.... You need to be the guy doing the private meetings.... You need to be the guy doing the media and traveling," Bush told Snow, according to one administration official's account of the session.
And Snow has been.
Treasury officials say the secretary has spent more than half of his time on Social Security. He has crisscrossed the country promoting Bush's proposal to let younger workers open individual investment accounts as part of an emerging plan to shore up the retirement system.
Only Bush has been more prominent in promoting the plan.
Yet, as the administration's "60 Stops in 60 Days" road show wrapped up Sunday, there was little evidence that the barnstorming efforts had eased widespread public skepticism about the president's plan.
And in the view of some Treasury watchers, including several former department officials who worked in Republican administrations, Snow's role as traveling salesman has contributed to a broader perception that the Treasury Department's influence and stature have declined since Bush took office.
"I think we are looking at one of the weakest Treasury Departments in my working lifetime," said Ken Guenther, a former Treasury official in the Ford administration and an advisor to three Federal Reserve chairmen. "It's not playing the role it should be playing on fiscal policy, tax policy, trade policy. The power base on those issues has moved to the White House and the Federal Reserve."
Several former Treasury officials question Snow's willingness to devote so much time and attention to a single legislative priority when the economy appears to be hitting a soft patch, the budget and trade deficits have widened and several top-level Treasury Department positions remain unfilled.
"I like John Snow and I respect him, but I think he's been put in an untenable position where he's been asked by the president to do things that someone else ought to be doing," said economist Bruce Bartlett, an assistant Treasury secretary in the administration of the first President Bush.
Snow should be spending most of his time managing the government's finances, monitoring currency flows, and developing economic and fiscal policy, Bartlett said.
