U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum almost made it Friday morning. After a week of heckles and jeers at colleges across
Pennsylvania, Santorum found a more polite and receptive crowd at Lafayette College in Easton.
It let him finish — without interruption — a 60-minute presentation on President Bush's plan
to allow younger workers to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in stocks and bonds.
After a final question, Santorum said the retirement system has worked well, ''but my point is I want the
same security for this generation.''
''No!'' Randy Kim, 18, of Lansdowne, Delaware County, shouted at the two-term senator. ''You want security
for the financiers.''
Kim was quickly escorted from the event, but not before 72-year-old Billy Givens, a frequent government
and establishment critic from Easton, tried to intervene.
''We almost made it through,'' said Santorum, R- Pa., who chuckled as the guards walked Kim out
as the audience clapped.
Givens was not arrested for trying to wrestle Kim free, but Kim, who is not a Lafayette student, was and
may be cited for disorderly conduct, said Hugh Harris, Lafayette's public safety director.
Lafayette was the second-to-last of the 10 colleges Santorum planned to visit to tout the benefits of private
retirement accounts, a hallmark of Bush's second-term domestic agenda but a lightning rod for Santorum and other Republicans.
As Santorum was giving his presentation in Easton, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other
members of the Senate Democratic leadership team were in Philadelphia. They see the president's plan as a way to unseat Santorum
in 2006.
Earlier this week, Santorum, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, was taunted and ridiculed at
places such as Drexel University in Philadelphia and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
Audiences voiced skepticism and concerns about Bush's plan, the Iraq war, gay rights and other contentious
topics.
The Easton visit was more subdued, although to get inside Colton Chapel, Santorum had to walk past a contingent
of students carrying peace signs, gay rights posters and campaign finance reform banners.
Bush's private retirement plan would allow workers born after 1949 to invest up to one-third of their Social
Security taxes — or as Santorum said, ''4 cents of every dollar earned'' — into a mix of bond and stock funds.
The private funds have the potential to earn a higher rate of return than the current system offers.
''You will not hear me say we have a crisis,'' Santorum told the crowd of about 200. ''We certainly don't
have a near-term problem, but we do have a long-term problem.''
Social Security works on a pay-as-you-go system, Santorum explained, and in 13 years, it will be paying
out more than it takes in. By 2042, it is projected to go bankrupt based on a ''perfect storm of demographics:'' Americans
are having fewer children, so there will be fewer workers; Americans are living longer; and baby boomers will begin to retire
in three years.
Still, Santorum acknowledged that Bush's plan will not solve a looming insolvency in Social Security. But
he depicted it as being better than alternative plans to shore up the fund.
Santorum maintained that private accounts would allow teenagers, college students and young adults to retire
with the same kind of security that their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents have enjoyed since President Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Congress instituted Social Security in 1935...
But Brendan O'Regan, 20, a member of a nonpartisan national student group, Democracy Matters, said Santorum
failed to adequately answer many questions, including implementation costs and the potential effect that private accounts
would have on the national deficit.
''He's not telling the American people everything they need to know,'' said O'Regan, a junior from Ringwood,
N.J. He pointed out that Santorum's own party is split over Bush's plan. ''That tells you something is wrong.''
The liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says implementing private accounts would add $4.9 trillion
to the national debt during over the first 20 years, or more than Social Security's projected $3.7 trillion shortfall over
75 years.
U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., came out against private accounts last year during his re-election campaign.
But now Specter has said he is willing to keep ''an open mind on the subject. … We've got to see a presidential proposal
before we can really make an evaluation.''
