AARP opposes Bush's proposal

WASHINGTON — Gearing up for battle over the future of Social Security, AARP, the influential lobby for older Americans, said Thursday that it opposed President Bush's plan to divert some payroll taxes into private retirement accounts. But it supports new incentives for private accounts that supplement Social Security.

Working closely with Congress and the White House, AARP helped shape legislation adding drug benefits to Medicare last year. Social Security is an even bigger issue, politically and financially, and lawmakers said Congress was unlikely to make major changes in Social Security over the objections of AARP.

Marie F. Smith, president of the organization, said, "AARP adamantly opposes replacing any part of Social Security with individual accounts." But Smith added that the group supported incentives for people to establish personal retirement accounts in addition to Social Security.

John C. Rother, policy director of AARP, said, "We favor private accounts when they are in addition to Social Security but not as a substitute."

The fight over Social Security, pitting Bush's vision of an "ownership society" against the Democrats' determination to preserve a cornerstone of the New Deal, is reflected in a battle over the proper terminology.

The White House dislikes the word "privatization," which it sees as a misleading and imprecise way to describe Bush's ideas for Social Security. Democrats insist that the term is accurate.

E-mail messages circulated within AARP in recent weeks indicated that the group would avoid the word whenever possible.

One message, by an editor of an AARP magazine, says, "There is a new forbidden word at AARP: Social Security privatization."

Another e-mail message, by a manager of its Web site, says, "The term 'privatization' is stricken from our vocabulary forever."

David M. Certner, director of federal affairs at AARP, said "privatization" had no fixed meaning or definition. To some people, he said, it means "getting rid of the entire program" — a goal not favored by the White House.

Martis J. Davis, a spokesman for AARP, said the organization was sensitive to the views of younger workers and retirees.

"Younger people think private accounts make sense," Davis said. "Polls by some organizations suggest that young people believe in flying saucers more than in Social Security. We have a problem with that. We don't want to end up being perceived as dinosaurs, and we don't want to be labeled as greedy geezers, because we are not."