Bill Clinton: “Absolutely, it should be considered. But what I want to say--I'd like to make two points--first is, the reason that I…”

“Absolutely, it should be considered. But what I want to say--I'd like to make two points--first is, the reason that I think it would be a bad thing for me to have a specific proposal now is I think it would shut down debate rather than increase it. And then everything would be, are you for or against this proposal? Right now, we've still--the American people, I think, on this issue--the good news is that everybody knows something fairly substantial is going to have to be done to make this system survive into the 21st century when all the baby boomers retire. That's good. Secondly, I think the younger people are, the more likely they are to be open to all kinds of new ideas, and that's good. But I think that what has not been accomplished yet in the public education process that we're now undertaking this year is for people to understand the tradeoffs involved in making a set of choices. That is, I could call you on the telephone and I could say, ``I am a reporter for the Clinton polling agency, and I'm going to ask you these 10 questions, and do you like these ideas?'' And you might like them all. But if I said, ``You can only have four of them,'' and then you have to rank them in rank order of priority, that's a much more sophisticated judgment. That's what I'm trying to get done now. On the individual accounts, I think it's absolutely an idea that deserves a lot of consideration. There is some debate, as you know, in Congress about trying to dedicate the surplus to individual accounts now just starting. The problem I have with that proposal is that it doesn't deal with the underlying Social Security program. What are you going to do--I think we still need some baseline Social Security in the 21st century that's a baseline protection for people that may not have a lot of money in the market or may lose some in the market or don't have a chance to accumulate a lot of wealth, and we've got to know how we're going to fix that. And then, the people--admittedly, that's what Senators Moynihan and Kerrey tried to do. They tried to guarantee a baseline Social Security benefit and, over and above that, have an individual account. And that's one of the things that I think ought to be fully explored here. Corporate Mergers Mr. Hunt. We only have a few more minutes, but as long as we're talking about whether things are good or bad, there have been a rash of big mergers lately, particularly in the financial service banks. Do you think, generally, without commenting on any one, but as a general proposition, is that good or bad for consumers and the economy?”