GALVESTON — When President Bush convenes a meeting today on the future of Social Security, a lot of people who want to be there won’t be.
Including the press corps. Only about 700 will be able to attend the session at 12:30 p.m. in the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Levin Hall. Local officials say that far more have expressed an interest.
“Our phones started ringing this morning, and they’ve been ringing all day long,” Tax Assessor-Collector Cheryl Johnson said late Monday afternoon.
That was after UTMB sent a press release saying that people interested in attending the roundtable should contact the county. It inadvertently listed the number for the tax assessor’s office.
Not that it mattered that much.
County Judge Jim Yarbrough, who did have some tickets to hand out, said it was tough deciding whom to give them to.
The White House said last week that one reason for the president’s visit was his interest in the county government’s alternative to Social Security.
In 1981, Galveston County and a few others opted to create a system in which employees pay into private accounts instead of Social Security.
Under Bush’s proposal, some of workers’ Social Security payments would go into private accounts that workers could invest in the stock market.
Unlike the Bush proposal, county workers have no latitude over how their accounts are managed. Instead, they’re invested for them in a mix of bonds and annuities.
Proponents tout the alternative plan by saying that it pays beneficiaries more than Social Security. But critics say the best-paid county workers do far better than the least paid. Also, they decry the fact that workers leaving the county’s employ can cash their accounts in, leaving them nothing for retirement.
Today’s hour-long roundtable will consist of the president, two active county employees, a retiree, Yarbrough and an expert on Social Security.
The president will speak for about 15 minutes before the discussion takes place. Bush will take no questions from the audience or the press.
On Monday, Yarbrough, a Democrat, said he wanted as many county employees to attend as possible.
“Somewhere around 100 tickets is what the county got,” he said, explaining that he tried to spread them evenly among county departments.
In addition to the county’s allotment, UTMB got about 125 tickets, said John Koloen, a spokesman for the university.
“Most of them went to faculty, staff and friends and supporters of the institution,” spokeswoman Chris Comer said.
Chris Stevens, chairman of the Galveston County Republican Party, said he got a much smaller allotment.
“I was asked to get a few names together and to not overdo it,” he said.
Stevens added that the White House did not instruct him on whom to invite. He said he tried to pick people between the ages of 20 and 40 — those he thought would be most affected by the changes Bush is proposing.
Taylor Gross of the White House Media Affairs Office did not return calls asking how tickets to the event were allocated.
The event originally was planned to be far smaller than it will be. It was originally envisioned to include only a few hundred who would meet at the county courthouse.
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Presidential visits
Today is the fourth presidential visit to Galveston.
Former President Ulysses S. Grant visited in 1880 and sitting President Benjamin Harrison came in 1891. Franklin Delano Roosevelt — who in 1935 signed Social Security into law — visited in 1937.
