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Arizona Activists: McCain Is a Bush McClone on Retirement Security |
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Sen. John McCain’s so-called “Straight Talk Express” has flip-flopped off the Social Security highway—and Arizona activists want to make sure voters know the presumptive Republican presidential candidate is looking out for Wall Street, not Main Street.
Several dozen members of the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and the Arizona Advocacy Network marched at the Social Security Administration’s Phoenix office this morning. They were there to warn voters that McCain is “Taking Aim” at Social Security by his recent endorsement of President Bush’s failed and flawed proposal to privatize the cornerstone of the workers’ retirement security.
McCain backed Bush’s privatization plan and voted for it in 2005. But in a 2006 meeting, he told a different story. Says Doug Hart, president of the Arizona Alliance:
We had a meeting with him about a year and half ago, 12 of us in his office, and he said it was a bad idea, that he didn’t favor privatization. Now he’s flip-flopped and it looks like his Straight Talk Express isn’t so straight after all.
In a March 3 Wall Street Journal interview, McCain says he supports a privatization plan “along the lines that President Bush proposed.” That could be disastrous for seniors, with benefit cuts between 30 percent and 50 percent or about $134,000 over a 20 year retirement, says the Alliance for Retired Americans.
Linda Brown, executive director of Arizona Advocacy, says campaign cash is behind McCain’s embrace of Social Security privatization.
He’s got to raise his money somewhere and the easiest place is on Wall Street and on the right wing where ideologues want to privatize everything.
Hart says counting on Wall Street—even as we watch a financial meltdown caused in large part by corporate greed—just doesn’t make sense.
Under the Bush-McCain scheme, our Social Security benefits would be thrown to the whims of the stock market. We get all the risks but Wall Street gets all the reward.
On the Democratic side, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) oppose privatizing Social Security. Go to Working Families Vote 2008 to find out more about the candidates and the issues.
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good to see the GOP is consistant in their efforts to bankrupt the American workers as well as the rest of the nation.
looks like it is either change (Democrats) or keep up the “good work” with the Republicans. With McCain’s position of an endless war in the mideast and keeping up the Bush economic policy, it is hard to believe anyone is going to vote for the lad.
Recently, on the Nightly Business Report, a PBS mainstay for almost thirty years, Allan Sloan, Sr. Editor at Large for Fortune offered his comments on fixing the future under funding of Social Security.
He suggested that the United States should “set up a sovereign wealth fund to invest Social Security’s cash surpluses. That way, when Social Security takes in less cash than it spends about 10 years from now, we’ll have a way to cover the shortfall. Sovereign wealth funds,” he goes on to explain, “are owned by countries, are a very big deal these days as I’m sure you know. They’ve put about $50 billion into big Wall Street firms that needed capital. They own maybe $3 trillion worth of various stuff but our country doesn’t have one.”
To clarify what a sovereign wealth fund is, according to Simon Johnson of the International Monetary Fund, a way for countries running a surplus to invest that money. Surpluses are, in case you have forgotten from the days when our country also had one, is extra cash that the country does not need for immediate purposes.
There are about twenty sovereign funds in existence now, investing about $3 trillion dollars. Alaska and Canada have one, investing oil money for the future of their citizens. Russia, China and numerous Asia-Pacific nations use money they do not need to invest in places needing a cash infusion. Lately, that has been us.
Mr. Johnson says not to worry though, the amount of money being used in these funds is only a small portion of the global value of trade securities.
Mr. Sloan continues, “So Social Security’s cash surplus — about $90 billion this year — goes into Treasury securities. Its trust fund owns more than $2 trillion of them, but they’re not wealth. Because when Social Security takes in less cash that it spends, the funds won’t make it any easier for the government to cover the checks than if there were no fund.”
A sovereign wealth fund could do so much more by purchasing, “high-rated corporate bonds, home mortgages of credit-worthy borrowers or anything solid” meaning anything carrying a high credit rating that could generate significant interest wealth over the long-term.
“Then,” he continues, “when Social Security needs cash, the fund would have real wealth. Now, I don’t think for a minute that anyone in Washington has the nerve to do this, because it would involve admitting the trust fund is useless. So, we’ll keep doing what were doing. Instead of building a Social Security sovereign wealth fund, we’re running an impoverishment fund and our children and grandchildren will get to pay for it.”
Social Security Fund? Are you talking about that thing the government thinks is it’s piggy bank full of money to use for any purpose it feels like ? Sure lets all put our Social Security savings into stock market, we all know how well it’s doing. If things get much worse my 401 plan will be sending me a bill instead of a statement.
The Democrats with Republicans sleeping, put in the taxation on Social Secuirty. As a senior Citizen, I am continuously punished for working by having a huge income tax(huge to me) to pay. Poverty in California with the high real estate value is up to about $90,000.00 per year. I prefer not to be homelss or move to an old folks home.
Sadly, for many Americans, their only source of income in retirement will be from social security. Therefore, it is essential that the fund be protected. Many employees of the steel and airline industry were robbed of their pensions receiving pennies on the dollar with laws written by and for “big business” under ERISA. When experts were asked about the workers plight they were told although what was done was immoral, actuarially it was still legal. Is this the kind of crooked America we want our children to grow up in?
Not only is McCain a Bush McClone on the social security issue, but on the issues of Free Trade and of illegal immigration as well.Even conservatives dislike Senator McCain for his legislative record on the latter issues.