1115.org

After five months of doom-laden projections, important file cabinets, misleading advertisements, antique cars, pre-screened “town meetings” and unfortunate terms such as “flat bust”, the drive to reform Social Security is finally moving from moving from conjecture to an actual plan. On Tuesday the Senate Finance Committee will start hearings aimed at eventually producing some sort of reform legislation, bringing back a debate that seemed missing in action throughout the Terri Schiavo and Pope deathwatches.

This should be an interesting battle, as supporters for and against Social Security privatization (and let’s face it, no carefully-crafted buzzword is going to change that) once again start flinging talking points across the media landscape. But at this point, it has to be considered an uphill battle for the President and his supporters, as they will be working against a currently-volitile stock market, unified Democratic opposition, a good amount of wavering (or at least unenthusiastic) Republicans, and public opinion polls that fall well short of favorable.

But those same polls show support for a Social Security proposal tied to the president’s name slipping to new lows. A memo released Friday by Democratic strategists Stan Greenberg and James Carville cited backing for the Bush proposal at 34 percent. “Support for the president’s Social Security initiative has collapsed,” the memo said. Last week’s stock-market roller-coaster ride has only heightened fears about allowing workers to convert some of their traditional Social Security benefits to investment returns from stocks and bonds, Democrats say.

Such numbers have not spooked Bush. After a White House meeting with lawmakers Wednesday, the president took Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) aside to tell him how well his “60 stops in 60 days” tour is going, Rangel recalled. Then Bush warned that voters would punish members of Congress in 2006 if they failed to act on Social Security’s long-term problems.

Considering how many stops on the “60 days” tour have been carefully scripted to only include the President’s supporters, it’s no wonder how great it must seem to be going. Of course, if things are a little less friendly in the world outside of a processed George Bush PR event, there’s always the option of telling the Democrats to stick it and just force something through:

After his own overtures to Democrats failed, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said last week he will move forward with Social Security legislation, hoping to push a private-accounts plan out of his committee this summer — on a party-line vote if necessary.

That would be a change from the committee’s traditional bipartisan comity, but there is no guarantee Grassley can even do that. Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) has been unwavering in her opposition to diverting Social Security taxes to personal accounts, a position underscored Friday by Snowe aides. And two other Finance Committee Republicans, Gordon Smith (Ore.) and Craig Thomas (Wyo.), have expressed skepticism.

Or perhaps not.