During the 2000 presidential campaign, President Bush campaigned on a promise to allow younger workers to control how part of their Social Security taxes were invested.

The Republican Party platform stated that, "each of today's workers should be free to direct a portion of their payroll taxes to personal investments for their retirement future."

During the first presidential debate in 2000, Mr. Bush said that younger workers would welcome the plan.

"There are a lot of young workers at our rallies we go to, that when they hear that I'm going to trust them at their option to be able to manage, under certain guidelines, some of their own money to get a better rate of return so that they'll have a retirement plan in the future, they begin to nod their heads, and they want a different attitude in Washington," he said.

There has not been any significant movement toward individually controlled Social Security accounts during the president's first term, but he continues to support the proposal. His reelection campaign's Web site states:

"President Bush supports the creation of Individual Development Accounts, providing savings matches for low-income Americans to accounts that would grow tax-free. The president's Social Security framework would also give all wage earners the opportunity to invest in financial assets, an opportunity that only half of Americans can now afford."

His site also backs recommendations put forth by his Social Security Commission aimed at increasing the benefits women receive from the program. Those proposals include expanding benefits for widows, whose checks are now up to 50 percent lower than what they and their spouses had received.

Although the president does not appear to have put changing Social Security as high on his priority list as other domestic initiatives, White House statements indicate the president still supports changes to the current system.

In response to a June 2004 congressional report estimating that Social Security will exhaust its trust fund a decade later than the program's trustee's 2042 projection, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the report is "another important piece of information that demonstrates that while Social Security is sound today, it isn't sustainable for the long term unless it's reformed and restructured." That, she said, "is what the president believes we need to do."

Bush 2004: Strengthening Social Security

White House: The President's Plan to Strengthen Social Security

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry's voting record in the Senate and his public statements reflect a clear opposition to the privatization of any of the Social Security Trust Fund.

"We must uphold the promise of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton and never allow the president and his Republican friends to threaten Social Security by putting it on the Wall Street trading block," the candidate said in May at the Massachusetts Democratic Convention.

Kerry has acknowledged the Social Security program faces long-term challenges, but he has not put forth specific proposals for changing the system. Instead, he has emphasized the importance of protecting the Social Security surplus.

His Senate Web site states, "While Senator Kerry is open to considering various avenues of reform, provided they preserve and maintain benefits for recipients, he believes it is fundamental that the reform effort starts under a sound financial footing. For that to occur, Congress must resist the temptation to spend Social Security surpluses on unrelated causes."

Kerry told the Online NewsHour that he opposes raising the retirement age because "we can't ask people to contribute to Social Security throughout their entire working lives, and then change the rules as they near retirement."

The senator also said he opposes "any means testing which could dramatically cut benefits for some Americans currently receiving Social Security."

When Tim Russert of NBC's Meet the Press pressed Kerry on whether means testing or raising the retirement age would be necessary to cope with the increasing number of retirees, Kerry responded that under President Clinton "we made Social Security whole until 2037."

"Along comes George Bush," the senator continued, "we have a downturn in the economy, an increase in expenditures for the military, and a big, big, big tax cut we can't afford. And all of a sudden, you look worse for Social Security and Medicare. I'm going to put us back on the track that we were in the 1990s. We said we were going to save Social Security first, and we had the ability to do it, without doing all these terrible things that you're saying. I'm not going to do those. I'm not going to cut Social Security benefits. I'm not going to extend the retirement age. And we're not going to have to raise the premiums. We can fix Social Security beginning with a stronger economy."

Kerry 2004: A Plan To Protect And Strengthen Medicare And Social Security

Vote by Issue Democratic Primary Quiz: John Kerry on the Issues