The absence of a Republican Social Security reform measure from the pension bill reported by the House Ways and Means Committee on Nov. 9 signalled the official death of this year's efforts to add personal investment accounts to the program.

Republicans, led by Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., had said through the summer that they planned to produce a retirement reform package that would include not just the the Pension Protection Act of 2005 but also language to reform Social Security, most likely the Growing Real Ownership for Workers Act of 2005, which would create individual accounts using the Social Security surplus. The GOP's Social Security reform plans, though, were thrown off track by other business, such as responding to Hurricane Katrina and getting long-overdue spending bills passed. The efforts were not helped by nearly unanimous opposition to their plans by Democratic lawmakers and reluctance among many Republican moderates to move away from Social Security's guaranteed benefits.

In the Senate, meanwhile, Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said this week that he is "very pessimistic" that Social Security can be reformed anytime soon, and he predicted that Congress would not take up the issue before a new president takes office in 2009.