President

President Bush

Bush has signaled his intention to make Social Security reform a priority during his second term, which could mean the fight over mandatory coverage will be rejoined.

"We'll start on Social Security now," Bush said. "We'll start bringing together those in Congress who agree with my assessment that we need to work together. ... [T]here are going to be costs. But the cost of doing nothing is ... much greater than the cost of reforming the system today."

Bush has long supported allowing workers to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into personal investment accounts but he did little to promote this during his first four years in office. Although he charged the 2001 Commission to Strengthen Social Security with devising reform plans that would include personal accounts, the panel's recommendations have sat on the shelf for three years.

Now, though, a major push is expected, with, according to Bush, the commission's report to be used as a starting point. Although the panel did not recommend forcing newly-hired state and local workers to join Social Security - Co-Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan said at the time that opposition to the measure was just "too strong, too organized" - talk of mandatory coverage is expected to resurface during the coming debate. Transitioning to a Social Security system that includes personal accounts is expected to cost $1 trillion or more over 10 years and revenue from state and local employers and employees now outside the program would cover tens of billions of dollars of that cost.

Even outside of proposals for personal accounts, mandatory coverage is often mentioned as a way to boost Social Security's finances. Edith Fierst, a member of the 1994-96 Social Security Advisory Council, for example, recently published a column in The Washington Post in which she argued that mandatory coverage and three other "minor" changes should be enacted instead of any sort of privatization.