By the time you read these words, you will probably already have heard the president’s State of the Union address, his first extensive remarks since the inauguration on his plan to begin phasing out Social Security and replacing it with a system of private investment accounts. But his barnstorming tour through Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Arkansas and Florida will just be getting under way.

The word out of the White House and repeated in the press is that the president’s campaign-style tour is aimed at pressuring Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and the two Sens. Nelson, Ben (D-Neb.) and Bill (D-Fla.) into signing on to the president’s privatization bill. But is that what’s really going on here?

A quick look at the map and the congressional roster shows that the president may have his work cut out for him just getting those states’ Republicans to toe the line.
Take Montana.

Baucus seems to have made his position pretty clear on the president’s private-accounts bill. But look at Rep. Denny Rehberg (R), the state’s at-large representative.

Just a couple weeks after he and President Bush won reelection in November, Rehberg told the Great Falls Tribune that he was quite a ways from feeling comfortable about “privatizing” Social Security and replacing part of it with “private accounts.”

“I haven’t seen anything I can support yet,” he told Tribune reporter Mike Dennison.

On Monday, I called Rehberg’s office to see if he’d gotten any more comfortable with the president’s plan. And what I heard from spokesman Brad Keena made it seem like the president still had at least a bit more work to do.

Keena said Rehberg “does believe in a plan that will fix and reform” Social Security. He’s just not sure he supports the president’s plan. Keena’s description of Rehberg’s position is that he is “open-minded.” And that’s good for Bush, since that means he at least has more of a shot with Rehberg than with Baucus.

Florida is another interesting example.

Sen. Bill Nelson appears to have made a strategic decision not only to oppose the president’s phase-out plan but to make that opposition a centerpiece of his reelection strategy for next year. So it doesn’t seem too likely that Bush is going to get him to shift gears any time soon. But look at where the president is planning to make his appearance Friday in Florida: Tampa. And look who represents Tampa and its nearby environs.

Let’s start right next door, in the 10th District with Rep. Bill Young (R). In an article in Sunday’s St. Petersburg Times, he said: “I’m not going to support anything that makes Social Security subject to the stock market. I have always been very careful to make a decision regardless of politics. I don’t think a decision should be made based on whether you support the president or don’t support the president.”

When the Times reporter tried to get comment from 9th District Rep. Mike Bilirakis (R), he refused even to speak.

And, lest we forget, how about Rep. Katherine Harris (R), just south in the 13th District? Given the track record, you have to figure she’ll be there for the president if he really needs her. But, for the moment, she’s a little off-message herself.

A Jan. 21 article from Bloomberg News said Harris had “expressed reservations about Bush’s proposal to partially privatize Social Security.” And back during the campaign she told AARP that she “opposes creating private individual accounts out of Social Security unless she can be assured that Social Security benefits will not be compromised in the future.”

And, last but not least, how about the very-hard-to-pin-down Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R). Her 5th District is just to the north, and it has more Social Security recipients than any district in the country. Actually, by a long shot.

Brown-Waite’s district has no fewer than 250,771 Social Security beneficiaries. The closest runner-up is Bob Wexler (D), over in Florida’s 19th District. And he comes in at just under 185,000.

At the moment, Brown-Waite is doing her level best to avoid getting whipsawed between the competing demands of the White House and her constituents. “I’m damn independent,” she told The Miami Herald last week, “and I plan on continuing to be that way. If we do anything this year that’s not going to benefit the majority of the people in my district, I’m not going to vote for it. I want to be able to go home.”

Don’t get me wrong. I know most of these folks probably won’t actually leave Bush waiting at the private-accounts altar when the big moment comes. But when you see Air Force One touching down in those prairie states and down in Tampa, give a little thought to whom he’s really there to pressure.

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column
appears in The Hill each week.

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