• According to the Commission's web site, President Bush created the bipartisan 16-member commission on May 2, 2001, "to study and report specific recommendations to preserve Social Security for seniors while building wealth for younger Americans." One of the Commission's "Guiding Principles" was that, "Modernization must include individually controlled, voluntary personal retirement accounts, which will augment Social Security." According to the web site, the Commission required $770,000 of taxpayers’ dollars to do its work.

•  At that time, there seemed to be no doubt that the Commission’s mission was to partially privatize Social Security. On May 2^nd , USA Today ran a story with the headline, "Commission Members All Back Privatization," which reported that all of the members chosen for the commission supported the President’s proposal "to let workers invest some of their payroll taxes in private accounts." White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer told the paper that it should not come as a surprise that the President would appoint commission members who believed "that personal retirement accounts are the way to save Social Security."The Wall Street Journal reported on May 10, "It's no secret that President Bush stacked his bipartisan Social Security commission with members who agree with his goal of creating private retirement accounts."

"I do believe that the Social Security commission staff report issued last week is a cynical effort to trash Social Security and under cut its public support in order to pave the way for cutting Social Security’s guaranteed benefits and turning much of the program over to Wall Street. And I do most certainly believe that the commission is a stacked deck."
--Congressman David Obey, day of the vote, July 25, 2001

• After the Commission held its first meeting on June 11, 2001, the Associated Press ran a story with the headline, "Bush’s Social Security Commission Plans for Privatization," reporting that the purpose of the Commission’s meeting was "developing a plan to let younger workers invest some of their payroll taxes in the stock market." This story also reported that the Commission "must persuade the public to privatize Social Security at a time when the stock market has plunged."

• In July 2001, the Commission began circulating drafts of its Interim Report, which emphasized the argument that the Social Security system is "broken." The Los AngelesTimes reported on July 20, 2001, that the draft interim report "represents an initial step in the commission’s strategy for generating support for allowing workers to set up private accounts with some of their payroll taxes." Convincing people the current Social Security system is in the road to financial ruin, the Times reported, "will put people in a frame of mind to accept the huge shift to partial privatization of Social Security."
  

• July 25, 2001- Filner Amendment on Social Security voted on in the House

[A brief history of the Filner Amendment]