The Social Security Reform Debacle: Were Lessons Learned, or Does This Foretell the Future of Other

Event Details

On March 28, 2001, President George W. Bush said, "Fact is, the dramatic stance I made on Social Security, pushing for these private accounts, is what got me elected. It was the key thing. People saw me as dealing with one of the real big problems, figuring it out." Jackie Calmes, the Wall Street Journal's lead political reporter, has watched how the administration lost the initiative on Social Security reform, and has written on the way the president "overestimated his post-election political capital and underestimated his opposition." Calmes covered Congress for six years, has been a senior economic correspondent, a White House reporter during the Clinton and Bush (43) administrations, and from 2001 to 2004 wrote the weekly "Washington Wire" column.