By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
Democrats deny stalling President Bush's plan to overhaul Social Security. Rather, they criticize the president's unwillingness to compromise with the minority party and his insistence on his own proposals.
That's the point where the fifth-term senator invokes the early '80s, when Republicans such as Bob Dole and Democrats such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan "worked out modest changes in a number of areas. There are a lot of things that can be done to protect Social Security. In 1982, there was no Trust Fund. Nothing in the bank. The Social Security system was actually borrowing money to keep afloat until it could put these fixes in place. They didn't have a 40-year cushion. They didn't have a 40-month cushion. They had a couple months to put a bipartisan solution together in 1982," Levin said.
Levin spoke to a small crowd who gathered Monday afternoon at the new Democratic headquarters in Cassopolis, in the Family Dollar shopping center.