Christine Hall, CNSNews.com
Thursday, Dec. 5, 2002

In the Senate, where a conservative agenda will remain most difficult, Republicans Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Cornyn of Texas, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Sununu of New Hampshire were all elected on platforms that included Social Security reform.

Fresh from election day success, some of those lawmakers feel empowered to make reform a legislative priority, even as they remain unsure just when or how that will happen.

New Hampshire Sen.-elect John Sununu, speaking at a Cato Institute Capitol Hill forum on Wednesday, conveyed a sense of optimism for reform within the beltway and predicted that President Bush would soon take up the issue again.

President Bush is much more committed to reform than many people on Capitol Hill are willing to believe, said Sununu, because he cares about empowering young workers to save and invest for retirement.

Reform is "the right thing for America," said Sununu, who took his share of criticism on the Social Security issue from Democrat Jeanne Shaheen during the recently concluded campaign.

An administration official said the White House hasn't decided yet how and when to proceed with Social Security reform, even though the president's reform commission produced a blueprint for reform two years ago. During an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, following the election, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card admitted, "I'm not sure it can happen next year."

In summing up the Republican victories, incoming House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., lamented that GOP candidates had been successful "taking up some Democratic issues as if they supported them," issues like "preserving Social Security, not privatizing it."

"We must never allow them again to hijack our issues on the campaign trail when they work against those very issues in the Congress of the United States," said Pelosi, in a National Public Radio interview on Nov. 10. "We have to be very clear about what we stand for and what the differences are between the Democrats and the Republicans."

The anti-reform group, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, warns it will not be cowed by the outcome of the recent election.

"People didn't vote on Social Security. People voted on two main issues: economics and jobs ... and ... national security," said the group's Grassroots Manager, Francisco Acosta.

"The administration should not read that as a green light to privatize Social Security and Medicare," Acosta insisted. "The administration and the Congress will have [a] real fight on this, even from people who voted for them," he promised.

Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., speaking at the Cato forum, called the election "a victory for genuine ideas versus intellectual bankruptcy" and said Republicans must follow it up by holding hearings, going on national tours to communicate to Americans and getting a reform bill (of which there are many) out of committee.

According to pollster David Winston, 56 percent of seniors voted for Republicans in the 2002 mid-term elections. While Social Security did not top the list of voter concerns this year, the fact that voters age 65 and up were the single most reliable voter group for Republican candidates suggests that privatization rhetoric didn't upset them, said Winston.

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