GOP leader vows cooperation with Democrats

Now is the time to tackle Social Security, Sen. Mitch McConnell said.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- Sounding a conciliatory note, the new Senate Republican leader vowed Tuesday to work with Democrats to pass a minimum wage increase and a strong ethics reform package shortly after the new Democratic-controlled Congress begins work next year.
Senate Minority Leader-elect Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., described as "easy stuff" much of the Democrats' opening agenda, including proposals to boost the minimum wage from 5.15 to 7.25 an hour and a congressional ethics package that would ban gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists as well as impose new controls on the budget deficit. These issues, however, have not proved to be easy before.
McConnell said he was urging bolder action, and challenged House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to push for a long-term solution to financing the Social Security system and a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration laws. Democrats in the last Congress blocked President Bush's proposal to partially privatize Social Security, while an impasse between House and Senate Republicans over approaches to immigration reform thwarted a deal.
"One thing I hope we can do, now that we have the election out of the way, is see if we can quit kicking the can down the road on a number of significant issues," he told a meeting of Washington Post editors and reporters. "Left over from last year, I would put immigration at the top of the list. But I also share the view ... that this would be the perfect time to tackle Social Security."
While some fear that the new Congress will become a political battleground in the run-up to the 2008 presidential campaign -- with at least eight Democratic and Republican senators considering bids for the White House -- McConnell argued that a grand deal on Social Security was still possible, even with a Democratic-controlled House and Senate and a Republican White House. He noted that divided government did not prevent President Reagan and a Democratic Congress from striking a landmark deal assuring the long-term solvency of Social Security in 1983.
McConnell said that the two parties should be open to a wide range of approaches -- "I don't think we should rule anything in or out" -- with the goal of making Social Security solvent "as far into the future as possible."
In recent days, Bush and senior administration officials have revived talk of reaching accord on an overhaul of Social Security that would maintain the program's solvency beyond the baby boom generation's retirement.
In an interview with the Post last week, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., the president's point man on Social Security, promised the White House would enter talks with Democrats with "no preconditions." That is a significant shift for Bush, who had previously said any Social Security legislation would have to include private accounts that would allow workers to divert some of their payroll taxes to investments in stocks or bonds.
McConnell added another concession Tuesday, saying Social Security legislation should "solve the problem as far into the future as possible" -- a standard that is far more flexible than Bush's insistence on nothing short of a "permanent" fix. McConnell, 64, will succeed Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., as the Senate Republican leader in January, when Frist steps down to explore a possible bid for the GOP presidential nomination.