GOP leaders bash Reid on Social Security issue

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Republicans are suggesting that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., flip-flopped on the issue of Social Security.

Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist in a Jan. 16 talk show appearance said Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, had voiced support for privatizing the popular federal payroll tax program. President Bush and some GOP leaders have made Social Security changes their top issue in the new Congress.

Reid in recent months has asserted that Democrats would strongly oppose Bush's plan to allow younger workers to funnel some of their Social Security payroll tax into investment accounts.

On Monday, the Republican National Committee issued a press release quoting Reid from a 1999 interview on "Fox News Sunday" as saying, "Most of us have no problem with taking a small amount of the Social Security proceeds and putting it into the private sector."

Reid has never backed diverting Social Security money to private accounts, despite the comment suggesting otherwise, Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said. Reid's 1999 remark may have been in reference to a broader discussion about setting up a retirement program using private accounts -- a program separate from Social Security, Hafen said.

Congress this week began its legislative business for the year, with Reid and Frist on Monday outlining their top 10 priorities. Then the two parties promptly got down to the business of bashing each other.

Reid on Monday called the Democrats' vision for the year the "Promise of America." But Reid's real promise is to block "the American people's priorities," Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said.

"Considering Reid's record of obstructing the Department of Homeland Security, obstructing medical liability changes and obstructing President Bush's efforts to preserve Social Security, it's clear that Reid and the Democrats would rather engage in partisan politics than work for their constituents," Mehlman said in a press release.

Reid had objected to some rules in the creation of the Homeland Security Department that he believed would hurt federal workers, but he supported the creation of department and elevating its director to a Cabinet-level position, aides said.

Reid decried the early "petty name-calling."

"Democrats have put forward a positive, optimistic agenda grounded in American values," Reid said. "Republicans gave us negative attacks and the same old ideas aimed at stoking up fear and dividing our country."