
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 1, 1994                   TAG: 9405010043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON NOW SUPPORTS A SEPARATE SOCIAL SECURITY AGENCY

In a reversal of administration policy, President Clinton says he now supports the creation of an independent federal agency to run Social Security, the nation's biggest social welfare program.

The change, administration officials say, results from an informal deal between Clinton and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee. In exchange for Clinton's support for the new agency, the officials said, Moynihan will redouble his efforts to get a health bill out of the Finance Committee by the end of May.

Moynihan and lobbyists for the elderly have long sought the change for Social Security, saying it would bolster public confidence in the program. Some 42 million people now receive monthly Social Security benefits.

Clinton's support virtually guarantees that the Social Security administration will be given independent status. The agency, created in 1935, is now part of the Department of Health and Human Services. With outlays of $318 billion this year, Social Security accounts for 50 percent of the department's budget and 21 percent of the entire federal budget.

In March, by a voice vote, the Senate approved a bill to establish Social Security as an independent agency.

Donna Shalala, secretary of health and human services, opposed the creation of an independent agency. Like her predecessors in the Reagan and Bush administrations, she argued that Social Security must be closely coordinated with Medicare, Medicaid and other programs run by the department. People apply for Medicare at Social Security offices.

Moynihan said, "Social Security was once a model agency run by the great civil servants of the New Deal era." But in the last 15 years, he said, "the agency has lost some of its distinctive energy" as top officials in the department focused increasingly on health policy.

In recent years, the senator said, the Social Security Administration has been "brain dead and lost in the exurbs of the Department of Health and Human Services." As a result, he said, service to beneficiaries has deteriorated and a majority of workers fear that Social Security will not have enough money to pay the retirement benefits they have earned.

by CNB