What exactly does Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a potential presidential candidate, want to do with the country’s two big entitlement programs?
Appearing on Meet The Press this past weekend, Pawlenty spoke in favor of radical changes to Social Security for younger workers:
So the truth of the matter is, is we are going to have to reform entitlement programs. I’ve done this in Minnesota, for example, with our bus drivers in the Twin Cities. They had post-retiree health insurance benefits, and the premise was this, if we made a promise to you, we’ll keep it. We’re not going to cut people off in terms of their pensions if we’ve made a promise to you. But for people who are new to the system, who are coming on, where we can fairly give them notice and fairly change expectations, the system’s going to change. And we did it.
We asked Alex Conant, spokesman for Pawlenty’s Freedom First PAC, whether Pawlenty would favor the budget roadmap outlined by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), which would privatize Social Security and replace Medicare with a voucher system for private health insurance. “I haven’t looked at that,” Conant said.
In addition, Pawlenty’s comment sounded somewhat similar to comments early this month from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). “So, what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system, that don’t have any other options, we have to keep faith with them. But basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off,” said Bachmann. “And wean everybody off because we have to take those unfunded net liabilities off our bank sheet, we can’t do it. So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.”
Does Pawlenty agree, we asked, with Bachmann’s call for weaning America off of Social Security and Medicare?
“I’ll let the governor’s comments speak for themselves. I think the governor’s comments were very clear,” said Conant, who said this wasn’t a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with particular individuals’ proposals that are out there.
Pawlenty’s appearance on Meet The Press was part of a media tour coinciding with his appearance last week at CPAC. He has been pitching himself as a conservative leader who has been able to win in the liberal state of Minnesota. It could be that Pawlenty’s position on Social Security and Medicare, pointing towards spending cuts instead of tax increases, would be more likely to appeal to the party’s conservative base.
