Hubbard the head of the National Economic Council recently sat down to talk with his hometown paper, the Jackson Sun.
Question: You spent much of 2005 working on the president's biggest domestic initiative, revamping Social Security. Why do you think it hasn't passed?
Answer: The president embarked on a successful effort to convince the American people that it was a big problem and to convince the Democrats on Capitol Hill that it was something that needed to be addressed sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party refused to deal with Social Security as a public policy issue. They viewed it as a political opportunity to defeat the president (and) so refused to ever come to the table to talk about how to fix Social Security.
It's something that's going to have to be confronted. It's like a house of termites. The longer you wait, the more it's going to cost to fix. So far we've not been successful, but I can tell you this president is not giving up on it.
Q: Are the Democrats also the reason why the idea never seemed to catch on with the public?
A: I would actually suggest that was the AARP. The AARP also decided early on that they were not going to be supportive of Social Security reform even though the president made it clear that anyone born before 1950 would not be affected. Even though they agreed that it was a big problem, they suggested that the president was trying to destroy Social Security. He was actually trying to do exactly the opposite.
