A member of the 2001 Commission to Strengthen Social Security that produced the reform model on which President Bush is largely basing his reform plan this week suggested that Bush drop his insistence that he will not sign a Social Security reform bill that does not include personal accounts.

"Given the lack of bipartisan support for carve-out personal accounts, the president should not insist on carve-out accounts if the Democrats support an overall legislative package for Social Security reform that is otherwise satisfactory to him," Robert Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management, said on May 19.

A day earlier, Pozen had been quoted as saying he "would advise the president to say that carve-out accounts are no longer required," a comment many Democrats seized on as indicating a new-found opposition to personal accounts.

Pozen, a Democratic member of the 2001 panel appointed by Bush, has been a tepid supporter of personal accounts, preferring to focus instead on measures needed to restore solvency to Social Security. He is the architect of a Bush-backed "progressive indexing" model under which Social Security benefit growth would slow for all but lower-income retirees.

In Congress, meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee and the panel's Social Security Subcommittee began hearings in May on Social Security reform. Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., has indicated that he plans to craft legislation that would address not just Social Security, but broad retirement issues, including long-term care insurance and ways to encourage saving among lower-income Americans. This approach is being interpreted by some observers as an effort to pick up votes that would not be cast for a bill that focuses only on personal accounts.