Public Money into Social Security Polls

While politicians debated saving Social Security, its federal overseer spent $2 million to poll the public. The Clinton administration wanted to know if people thought the program saved older Americans from poverty. The Bush administration refocused questions on its private investment plan. Taxpayers covered the cost of the polling, according to government documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Social Security Administration first hired the Gallup Organization in 1998, when Bill Clinton was in office. The survey changed markedly in 2003, when George W. Bush began his re-election campaign.
The Bush administration removed from the Clinton-era survey two statements that at least three-quarters of those polled had agreed with: "Social Security benefits play a major role in keeping many senior citizens out of poverty" and "Social Security is the largest single source of income for most elderly Americans."
New questions sought to determine when the public thought the federal retirement program would go broke and whether people knew anything about Bush's plan to let workers invest part of their Social Security payments in private accounts.
The poll did not mention either president. The Social Security agency, now run by Bush appointee Jo Anne Barnhart, says it changed the questions in 2003 on its own, without input from the White House.