WASHINGTON – Hillary Rodham Clinton has given a private clue on an issue she has refused to discuss publicly – how to preserve Social Security in the long term.

The Democratic presidential contender told an Iowa voter she would be willing to consider an idea that her Democratic rival John Edwards has been promoting – raising Social Security taxes on high-income earners.

Clinton dodged the question when asked publicly, as she has on several other topics in debates and during campaign stops.

The government collects money to pay Social Security benefits from taxes on each worker’s earnings up to $97,500. Some have suggested that raising or eliminating that limit could be a way to bring in more money and prevent benefit cuts for future retirees.

Clinton refused to answer whether she would consider raising the cap during a recent debate in Iowa. “I don’t think I should be negotiating about what I would do as president,” she said at the time.

One Iowa voter, Maquoketa Community High School government teacher Tod Bowman, pressed her for more specifics when she took audience questions during a public meeting in his hometown Sunday night. With a packed gymnasium of voters and the media watching, she didn’t say more but used her response to criticize President Bush’s handling of the issue and the deficits he’s run up. She said her first step to improving Social Security would be to get back to fiscal responsibility.

Afterward Bowman approached Clinton so he could pose for a photo with her and discuss the issue further.

She told him she didn’t want to put an additional tax burden on the middle class but would consider a “gap,” with no Social Security taxes on income from $97,500 to around $200,000. Anything above that could be taxed.

An Associated Press reporter overheard the conversation and discussed it with Bowman. He said he didn’t agree with Clinton and felt that as someone who makes under $97,500 he pays an unfair share.

“I understand that in her world $97,000 is the middle class, but here in Iowa $97,000 doesn’t qualify as the middle class,” Bowman said.

Bowman said he is a Democrat and hasn’t decided whom he will support, but “she didn’t strike me as earthshaking because she talked in such general senses on several different subjects.” He said he understood why she didn’t answer him publicly on the Social Security question.

“She doesn’t want it to be public record what she says,” he said. “And I don’t blame her because no matter what she says, she’ll be attacked.”