Gore proposes safeguards for personal privacy, Medicare

LOS ANGELES - Vice President Al Gore pushed a pair of initiatives Thursday - one to outlaw ''identity theft'' trafficking in Social Security numbers, and the other to shield Medicare from budgetary raids.

''I think we should do for Medicare what we've done for Social Security: set it aside, protect it and ensure that the trust fund money is not ever used for anything except the purposes for which it is collected,'' Gore said.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., pledged cooperation on the Medicare proposal but was hardly giving Gore credit for the lock-box idea.

''Just as the vice president did not invent the Internet, he also did not invent the Social Security lock box,'' Hastert said, adding that it was congressional Republicans who fought for the measure and President Clinton, who ''finally agreed to our proposal.''

But the White House took issue with Hastert. ''We are not for their version or their idea of a so-called lock box, which is simply a slogan, not substance,'' said Clinton adviser Joel Johnson.

Campaigning in California, Gore said he would make his Medicare proposal official Tuesday in New York in a speech launching a two-week ''progress and prosperity tour'' that he's counting on to win him a fresh, approving look from voters.

Aides said he will travel to Kentucky, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and other battleground states where he must knock out Republican rival George W. Bush to win the White House.

Gore's Medicare announcement is meant to dovetail with the possible release next week of new official budget projections showing bigger-than-expected surpluses that will give the government room to remove Medicare funds from general budget accounting.

Gore proposed putting Medicare Part A funds, which pay for hospital care for about 40 million elderly and disabled people, ''into a lock box that's protected against the ambitions of those in either party who might want to get into the Medicare Trust Fund and use it for other purposes.''

Gore would use trust fund surpluses to pay down the national debt, then reinvest interest savings into Medicare to extend its solvency for the baby boom's retirement.

On a three-day swing dominated by more than $1 million in unregulated ''soft money'' fund raising for the Democratic National Committee, Gore was dogged by a character wearing a wig and Pinocchio nose, courtesy of the Republican National Committee.

The RNC is after Gore for breaking a pledge not to use DNC soft money for TV issue ads unless Republicans did so first. Democratic ads began airing Thursday in key states.

The race is close, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll taken this week and released Thursday, with Bush at 48 percent and Gore at 44 percent, with a 5-point margin of error. Bush had a 49-42 edge in the same poll late last month.

In the more important state-by-state race, Bush leads in states with two-thirds of the 270 electoral votes needed to win, while Gore is ahead in states with fewer than half the needed votes.

At the Los Angeles County sheriffs training academy, Gore also called for making so-called ''identity theft'' a federal crime.

The Justice Department submitted legislation to Congress on Thursday that aides said Gore initiated after meeting several months ago with the parents of Amy Boyer, who was stalked and murdered last year by a man who bought her Social Security number for $45 off a Web site.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced the bill, making it a federal crime to buy Social Security numbers or sell them for profit, on behalf of the administration, said Gore campaign spokesman Chris Lehane.

Gore sat with an arm around Boyer's mother, Helen Remsburg, between the polished stones of a law enforcement memorial. When he spoke, he was flanked by seven dozen uniformed sheriffs.

''I will make it a national priority to stop this kind of traffic in personal data,'' Gore said. ''The information age should not mean that your personal information is misused or abused.''

The Social Security Administration's hot line received 30,000 complaints of Social Security number misuse in 1999. Thieves and stalkers can use the numbers, available from a proliferating number of Internet sites, to apply for fraudulent credit cards or obtain detailed personal information.

Gore touted the fact that he toured the academy with Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy D. Baca, who endorsed Republican Sen. John McCain in the primaries and arranged for Gore's impressive campaign backdrop Thursday. Baca did not say if he supported Gore.