In a speech aimed at farmers and the young, he said he would prevail in reshaping Social Security.
The polls are dismal, and any signs of progress in Congress are hard to discern.
But an upbeat President Bush brought his ongoing campaign to overhaul Social Security to Penn State's main
campus here yesterday afternoon, after his fund-raising appearance in Bryn Mawr.
"I'm going to continue working this issue, state after state after state," Bush told the annual convention
of the Pennsylvania FFA, the group formerly known as the Future Farmers of America. "There's no doubt in my mind that we're
going to get this job done."
Since his State of the Union speech in early February, Bush has given 36 talks on Social Security in 27
states. The language has varied little from week to week: Social Security has a problem; it needs to be fixed; and younger
workers should have the option of putting some of their payroll-tax money into private accounts.
If there was anything new yesterday, it was the amount of time the President spent trying to explain the
idea, which he embraced six weeks ago, that future promised benefit increases ought to be maintained for the poor but reduced
on a sliding scale for the wealthy and middle class.
As he has done before, he challenged those in Congress who don't like his proposals to come up with some
of their own. "That's why they sent you to Washington, D.C., in the first place," he said.
Despite this show of determination, the signs are not promising that Bush will get what he wants.
In the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, conducted earlier this month, only about a third of those questioned
said they approved of the President's handling of the Social Security issue. Only about a fourth said they liked the current
Bush proposal - voluntary private accounts combined with reductions in promised benefits down the road.
"The more he keeps at it, the more his poll numbers keep going down, down, down," said Martin Berger, leader
of Pennsylvanians United to Protect Social Security, which had demonstrators in Bryn Mawr and outside Eisenhower Auditorium
here yesterday. "He should back off, give it up, sit down and work it out in a bipartisan fashion."
On Capitol Hill, both the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee are struggling with
the issue. Neither seems particularly focused on the creation of personal accounts, which have been the centerpiece of Bush's
approach.
The House is looking at a broad range of issues concerning pensions and retirement savings; the Senate is
focused on trying to improve Social Security's long-term solvency, possibly by raising the retirement age.
Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.), a longtime advocate of private accounts, said yesterday that the prospects
for legislative action would remain bleak so long as the Democrats were content to oppose Bush's ideas and offer none of their
own.
"It's very unfortunate, so far, that the other side has decided this is just about politics and not about
solving problems," Santorum said.
Coming to State College gave Bush the opportunity to address two of the groups he hopes will find his ideas
appealing - family farmers, who have to pay both the employer and employee share of the payroll tax, and young people, many
of whom wonder about what will be left of Social Security when their time comes to collect.
"We're asking young people to pay payroll taxes, hard-earned money, into a system that's going broke," Bush
said, citing projections that Social Security will be unable to meet all of its obligations in 2041. "That doesn't seem right
to me."
The reaction he got from the young audience was mixed.
