Romney, Perry trade debate jabs on Social Security

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney, left, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry ges­ture dur­ing a Repub­li­can debate Mon­day, Sept. 12, 2011, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Mike Carlson)

CHARLES BABINGTON

Asso­ci­ated Press

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Under attack from rival Mitt Rom­ney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry soft­ened his rhetoric if not his posi­tion on Social Secu­rity in a cam­paign debate Mon­day night, declin­ing to repeat ear­lier state­ments ques­tion­ing the program’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity and liken­ing it to a “Ponzi scheme.”

“A pro­gram that’s been there 70 or 80 years, obvi­ously we’re not going to take that away,” Perry said as his cross-stage rival pressed him repeat­edly to answer Romney’s pointed questions.

The Texas gov­er­nor counter-attacked quickly, accus­ing Rom­ney of “try­ing to scare seniors” with his own com­ments on a pro­gram that tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans — includ­ing mil­lions in Florida alone — rely on for part or even all of their retire­ment income.

The debate unfolded in the Florida city where Repub­li­cans will gather next sum­mer to bestow the party nom­i­na­tion on a chal­lenger to Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

It was the sec­ond time in less than a week that Perry, the front-runner in opin­ion polls, and Rom­ney, his clos­est pur­suer, shared a stage with Min­nesota Rep. Michele Bach­mann, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, for­mer House Speaker Newt Gin­grich of Geor­gia; for­mer Sen. Rick San­to­rum of Penn­syl­va­nia, for­mer Gov. Jon Hunts­man of Utah and busi­ness­man Her­man Cain.

The debate was spon­sored by tea party orga­ni­za­tions and CNN, and Bach­mann and Perry used their open­ing com­ments to stress their eager­ness for sup­port from the activists who helped pro­pel Repub­li­can con­gres­sional can­di­dates to vic­tory in the 2010 elections.,

Bach­mann said she “brought the voice of the tea party to the United States Con­gress as a founder of the tea party caucus.”

Perry said he was glad to be at the debate with the Tea Party Express.

So much for the niceties.

Within min­utes, Rom­ney moved aggres­sively to press Perry on Social Secu­rity, say­ing the front-runner had pre­vi­ously called it a Ponzi Scheme, an absolute fail­ure and unconstitutional.

Perry did not dis­pute the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. In his recent book he called the retire­ment income pro­gram an exam­ple of a fed­eral ini­tia­tive that is “vio­lently toss­ing aside any respect for our found­ing prin­ci­ples of fed­er­al­ism and lim­ited government.”

He said retirees and near-retirees are assured of receiv­ing the ben­e­fits they’ve been promised — and should be — but changes are needed to make sure younger work­ers have any sort of ben­e­fit when they near retirement.

Rom­ney wasn’t sat­is­fied with that, quot­ing oth­ers as say­ing the Texas governor’s posi­tion on Social Secu­rity could spell defeat for the party as it tries to win the White House from Obama next year. Repeat­edly, he pressed Perry to say whether he believes the pro­gram is uncon­sti­tu­tional. Just as insis­tently, Perry ducked.

Then he coun­tered, quot­ing Rom­ney as hav­ing said in his own book that if peo­ple did with their financ­ing what had been done with Social Secu­rity receipts it would be a crim­i­nal offense.

“You’ve got to quote me cor­rectly,” Rom­ney responded. “What I said was tak­ing money out of the Social Secu­rity trust fund is crim­i­nal and it’s wrong.”

Social Secu­rity ben­e­fits are financed through a pay­roll tax that work­ers and their employ­ers pay. Accord­ing to the most recent inde­pen­dent fore­casts, unless Con­gress enacts changes, ben­e­fits will have to be cut begin­ning in 2037.

Posted by AP News on Sep 12 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.