Senator: Few asking for Social Security change

? Assigned to put President Bush’s Social Security ideas into a bill that can pass Congress, Charles Grassley is finding little clamor for it among the people who have kept him in the Senate for 25 years.

“What I need to hear people say is, ‘We expect you to fix this,'” Grassley said in between town hall meetings. “I’m not hearing that.”

At each stop in an Easter week marathon of meetings in 19 counties, the 71-year-old chairman of the Senate Finance Committee tries to make the case that the federal pension system protecting millions of older Americans from poverty is in trouble.

A two-word question — “Social Security?” — becomes the cue for Grassley’s 10-minute spiel.

If nothing is done, Grassley warns his audience, Social Security will go broke by 2042. If Congress waits just one more year to fix it, the cost will be another $600 billion.

A troubling aspect of Grassley’s town meetings is the demographics: Everywhere Grassley goes, he sees a lot of people with gray hair, but not many young people, a group more likely to support changes to Social Security. According to the 2000 census, 14.9 percent of Iowans are 65 and older. That’s the fourth-highest percentage in the nation; overall, 12.4 percent of Americans are 65 and older.

At week’s end Grassley said the demographics and lack of clamor had led him to a tentative verdict. “I think it’s very difficult for me to say today that we’ll present a bill to the president.”