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Privatizing Social Security Still on Bush’s Agenda |
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The Bush administration and its extremist Republican cronies on Capitol Hill haven’t given up on their obsession to privatize Social Security—a move that would create huge windfalls for their Wall Street friends while cutting working people’s benefits and placing their retirement security at risk.
Last year, America’s workers generated hundreds of thousands of letters and e-mails to the White House and Congress opposing the privatization of the nation’s most successful safety net—dealing Bush his greatest domestic policy defeat.
Working family activists again will be contacting Congress and candidates, demanding they strengthen rather than privatize Social Security.
Bush clearly plans to make Social Security privatization a priority in 2007 if Republicans keep control of Congress.
Quotes in recent weeks indicate that Social Security privatization likely will top Congress’s legislative agenda—after the fall elections. Here are a few recent comments.
- In his first speech after taking office last month, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former major Wall Street insider, said he was under orders from Bush to pursue Social Security reform.
- On June 27, Bush told the Manhattan Institute: “If we can’t get it done this year, I’m going to try next year. And if we can’t get it done next year, I’m going to try the year after that because it is the right thing to do. Now is the time to solve the problems of Medicare and Social Security.”
- In July, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared: “If I’m around in a leadership role come January, we’re going to get serious about this.”
Meanwhile, Bush included a request in his proposed fiscal 2007 budget for $721 billion over the next 10 years to turn Social Security into a system of private accounts with lower guaranteed benefits to Americans. Bush’s proposal includes significant cuts in guaranteed benefits for the vast majority of Social Security recipients through the indexing of initial benefits to prices, rather than wages.
A new report by Campaign for America’s Future outlines how critical the vote in November will be for the future of Social Security—and the future of our retirement security. According to the report’s authors:
…the 2006 elections will be pivotal—either by driving a stake through the heart of privatization or by creating the conditions for its revival from the dead. In the Senate, where 46 members already voted for privatization, only a handful of seats would need to switch to privatizers—or a small number of current officeholders could change their position—for a majority of senators to pass privatization legislation and begin the phaseout of Social Security.
The report, Will Social Security Privatization Return? It Depends on the Outcome of the 2006 Elections, includes a scorecard on the congressional candidates who support privatization.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, says it’s “unbelievable that the administration continues to promote the failed and frankly harmful idea of privatizing Social Security”
Social Security privatization would still undermine the only financial security many Americans have in retirement or disability, would still increase the deficit, and there’s still nothing acceptable about that.
For good reason, Americans have said no to Social Security privatization. So, no matter how many times this administration tries to put Social Security privatization in the fine print, Congress has a responsibility to make sure the people’s will prevails.
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