As we noted a couple months back, one of the biggest Social Security bamboozlers in this cycle is Peter Roskam, who’s running in Illinois’ 6th District, the one left open by the retirement of Henry Hyde (R).
Roskam is currently a state senator. 
And last year when a vote came up on whether or not to phase out Social Security with the Bush privatization plan, he ducked out and didn’t vote at all.
We still have our contest going to see who can find out what Roskam’s position is on phasing out Social Security. But now we’ve got an example of just how hard that’s going to be.
Roskam told AARP that: “My position is that we must find a way to strengthen and protect Social Security without raising payroll taxes, without reducing benefits, without raising the retirement age and without privatizing the system.” But he answered “yes” 
to the National Tax Payers Union’s survey on whether he supported privatization.
So the bounty in the contest still stands at TPM t-shirt and two TPM mugs for the first reader who can get a straight answer out of Roskam on where he stands whether or not to partially phase out Social Security and replace it with private accounts. If you’re interested, see the contest rules here.
