Clinton Discusses Retirement

WASHINGTON: If it's Tuesday, it must be Social Security. President Clinton's much-trumpeted week of policy pronouncements continued with the opening of a bipartisan "national dialogue" in Kansas City, Mo., on the future of your retirement check. By current reckoning, it'll be a mere three decades before the system buckles under the weight of the Baby Boomers. "We can and must put Social Security in order," said Clinton. "It would be unconscionable if we failed to act now."

Fine words, but the President had little to offer in the way of action. None of the solutions being proposed in Congress -- raising taxes, raising the retirement age or allowing retirees to gamble a portion of their payroll -- received his stamp of approval. Which means, according to White House correspondent Karen Tumulty, that we won't see a Clinton Social Security plan this year -- if at all. "He may have learned some of the lessons of health care," says Tumulty. "You do things slowly." Hopefully for Clinton, the system will be successfully tweaked by August 19, 2011 -- his 65th birthday.