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Social Security Privatization: Here It Comes Again |
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If Republicans retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in this fall’s elections, the man who is likely to lead one of the most powerful congressional committees says their first legislative priority should be privatizing Social Security.
Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), who is expected to take over the Ways and Means Committee if his party maintains its majority, wants to resurrect the Bush administration’s failed privatization scheme. The plan would shower billions of dollars on Wall Street firms and turn a guaranteed retirement benefit into a gamble that makes “Five-Card Texas Hold ’Em” seem like a sure bet.
McCrery told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce meeting Tuesday that along with privatizing Social Security he backs other chamber priorities, including lowering corporate taxes, according to news reports of the meeting.
Great news for a group that lobbied hard for the recently passed $70 billion tax-cut-for-the-rich bill, which slashes dividend and capital gains taxes, and that is drooling over the possibility the multimillionaire estate tax could be repealed.
The American public has soundly rejected calls to privatize Social Security, which would force huge benefit cuts and turn Social Security’s guarantee into a gamble, says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. But:
It seems President Bush and his right wing allies in Congress march to their own relentless drumbeat when it comes to dismantling the retirement security of America’s working families—and serving the interests of Wall Street.
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) blasted McCrery’s attempt to breath life into the Social Security privatization debate—a debate in which Bush failed to win popular or political support even before the public soured on his leadership and policies, driving his approval ratings to record lows. Miller said:
If there isn’t a change of leadership in Washington, you can bet that Republican leaders are going to make another run at privatizing Social Security and cutting retirees’ benefits. It is shocking that the Republicans would make Social Security privatization one of their top priorities after the American public resoundingly repudiated the idea last year.
The AFL-CIO, Alliance for Retired Americans and other allied groups led a huge campaign to tell Congress to stop Bush’s plans to privatize Social Security and strengthen it instead. The mobilization generated hundreds of thousands of messages to lawmakers and saw demonstrations around the country telling Wall Street to keep its hands off Social Security.
In his daily political and legislative e-mail, Ed Sills, Texas AFL-CIO communications director, has some hard-hitting comments on what’s really behind the Social Security privatization revival:
As scofflaw Attorney General John Mitchell once reminded us, we should make the distinction between what they say and what they do. The folks in charge will emphasize any issue to win elections, but they will serve Wall Street and the zillionaires once elected. Thus, repealing the estate tax assumes urgent importance even as lawmakers preach the need for reducing the national deficit. And another war over Social Security privatization looms ahead of any real effort to appease the radical right that is being courted so assiduously during election season.
Ironically, the same day McCrery made his Social Security privatization remarks, a new study predicted 43 percent of working-age households are likely not to have enough to retire on and maintain their standard of living.
The Center for Retirement Research (CRR) at Boston College developed a retirement risk index that pegs risk as being at least 10 percent below what a household needs to maintain its standard of living.
The two most at risk groups are low-income “Generation Xers” (born between 1965 and 1972) who face a 60 percent risk of not having sufficient retirement income and 54 percent of the later “Baby Boomers” (born 1955-1964).
If Social Security is privatized and benefits are cut, another group that is now 53 percent at risk for not having enough retirement income—two-earner Gen X couples—would be at even greater risk.
Miller points to the growing retirement insecurity working families face:
At company after company, workers’ private pension benefits are being slashed. The typical American worker’s 401(k) has a balance that can barely finance a year of retirement, let alone a whole retirement. The only sure thing left for most American retirees is Social Security. But that hasn’t stopped Republican leaders from trying to turn Social Security from a guarantee into a gamble.
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