Team of Bush and Bush pitch Social Security plan

ATLANTA — Former first lady Barbara Bush teamed up with her son, the president, on Friday in trying to drum up support among older Americans for his Social Security and Medicare plans.

He called his 80-year-old mother "my favorite senior citizen," and she tartly reminded him that at age 59 he was almost one himself — with hair starting to turn white.

"You can see where I got my white hair from," the president retorted.

At a senior center, and then before an invitation-only audience at a downtown civic center, the mother and son team promoted Bush's embattled Social Security restructuring plan and the new Medicare prescription drug program that takes effect Jan. 1.

And like a vaudeville team, they kept stepping on each other's lines and zinging each other.

At the Wesley Woods senior center, both Bushes emphasized the importance of getting seniors to sign up for the new prescription drug plan, part of a Medicare restructuring enacted in December 2003.

As Bush started to talk up the plan, his mother turned to him and said, "Weren't you going to tell people they ought to ask doctors, lawyers, people they trust whether this is a good deal for them?"

"Yes, I am," he said, repeating what she said, and adding, "This is a good deal."

"It saves them money," Barbara Bush said.

"And save money, yes," said the president. "See? That's why she's here — to remind me what to say."

"And save their lives," he added.

When Bush said he and his mother would go around the room to shake hands, she pointed to the right and told him, "You go that way."

"She's still telling me what to do," Bush said, going dutifully to the right.

In his civic center speech, Bush expressed concern that the benefits of the plan may not be initially appreciated by many of the 42 million eligible Americans who receive Medicare benefits. Literature and forms go out Oct. 1 and enrollment begins Nov. 15.

Low-income seniors — individuals earning less than $15,000 a year or couples earning less than $19,000 — would have roughly 95 percent of their prescription drug costs covered under the plan.