2/4/2005, Vol. 154 Issue 53115, pB3-B3. 999p.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg distanced himself from President Bush yesterday on the president's proposal to divert some Social Security taxes into private investment accounts, describing the plan, which was the central theme of Mr. Bush's State of the Union address, as excessively risky.
"I've never thought that privatizing Social Security made a lot of sense," said Mr. Bloomberg, who, like Mr. Bush, is a Republican. "I think what you'd see is that people would invest - some people would invest - unwisely."
He added, "These are not monies that people should be speculating with."
Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire who earned his fortune by creating business machines that track securities and the financial markets, made his comments at a ceremony at the start of construction for a new Y.M.C.A. building in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
If enacted, Mr. Bush's plan would allow workers who are 55 and under as of this year to invest as much as 4 percent of their wages in stocks and bonds that cannot be liquidated until retirement.
Several other Republicans around the country also professed misgivings about Mr. Bush's proposal, which was unveiled during his address, on Wednesday night. Among them were Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Representative Jim McCrery of Louisiana.
But the comments from Mr. Bloomberg, a Democrat until his 2001 mayoral bid, came at a particularly delicate moment in his nascent re-election campaign.
With the former City Council minority leader, Thomas V. Ognibene, vowing to run against him in a primary this year, Mr. Bloomberg faces two potential Republican opponents who are questioning his commitment to his party. At the same time, Democrats running for his job are criticizing him for being too close to the president, which they say they believe could hurt his standing with the overwhelmingly Democratic general election voter pool.
Mr. Ognibene used Mr. Bloomberg's comments to once again paint him as a disloyal Republican. "He's trying to be negative rather than be supportive of the president's initiative to try to save Social Security," Mr. Ognibene said yesterday. "From that point of view, it's not very Republican."
Mr. Bloomberg said that he did not believe he was taking sides against Mr. Bush or his party with his comments but, rather, reiterating a longstanding position.
"I don't agree with the president on everything - I agree on a lot of things, but certainly not this one," he said. "I don't think it's a partisan issue."
Mr. Bloomberg did say he agreed with the president that the Social Security system's future health is uncertain, an assertion with which many Democrats have disagreed. And he said he would withhold final judgment on the president's plan until he saw it in full detail.
Mr. Bloomberg's response to Mr. Bush's proposal was far more in line with that of one of the Democrats seeking his job, Representative Anthony D. Weiner, than with those of his Republican opponents.
At an appearance at the Stein Senior Citizen Center in Manhattan, Mr. Weiner rejected the president's plan as risky, unnecessary and something that would drive many of New York's eventual retirees into poverty. Mr. Weiner, representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens, has painted Mr. Bloomberg as too close to Mr. Bush in the past but did not link Mr. Bloomberg to the Bush plan.
This is not to say that it was all peace and love between Mr. Bloomberg and the Democrats yesterday. Members of the staff of the Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., a Democrat, accused Mr. Bloomberg of refusing to attend his State of the Borough address yesterday because they had rebuffed a demand from the mayor's aides that Mr. Bloomberg be allowed to speak. Mr. Bloomberg's aides did not dispute that account but said speaking invitations are generally given priority over others, and he had several of them yesterday.