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AFL-CIO in Coalition to Fight McCain’s Efforts to Gamble Away Social Security |
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Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has voted to protect and strengthen Social Security and against privatizing the nation’s most successful retirement security program.
On the other hand, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says Social Security is an “absolute disgrace” (see video) and that President Bush’s failed privatization scheme is the way to go. Yesterday, a coalition of activist groups told the Republican presidential candidate that’s not going to happen.
During a telephone press conference hosted by Americans United For Change, union, retiree and activist leaders outlined plans to keep voters informed of McCain’s support of privatization and the wide gap between his and Obama’s proposals for Social Security.
Said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
The American people understand the importance of Social Security. They roundly rejected President Bush’s attempt to privatize the program.
This month, John McCain made clear he doesn’t understand how Social Security works, and over the course of his career, he has demonstrated that he would seize any opportunity to weaken the program and jeopardize its benefits.
Joining Sweeney on the call were AFSCME President Gerald McEntee; Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans; and USAction President William McNary. McEntee, who chairs the AFL-CIO Political Committee, puts it this way:
The American people need Social Security benefits they can count on—benefits that aren’t subject to the highs and lows of the stock market or the partisan proposals of politicians. At a time of market uncertainty and economic distress, only a politician as out-of-touch as John McCain would suggest that now is the time to gamble with Social Security.
Americans United For Change plans to use its Bush Legacy Bus tour, now crisscrossing the United States, to let voters know about the dangers of the Bush/McCain privatization scheme and has unveiled an aggressive new online petition drive urging McCain to abandon his support for the Bush privatization plan. The other groups announced plans to mobilize their members at events nationwide to highlight the differences between Obama’s plans to strengthen Social Security and McCain’s privatization proposals.
Coyle noted that some 42 million Americans—seniors, widows, widowers, the disabled and young children who’ve lost a parent—receive Social Security. Privatizing Social Security would amount to throwing their checks onto the “roulette wheel” of the stock market, he said.
Social Security has kept millions out of poverty, and is one our nation’s greatest success stories. Our nation’s retirees are suffering from skyrocketing gasoline, grocery and health care prices. They see the turbulence of our financial markets, and worry about plans, advocated by McCain, to throw a privatized Social Security system on to this roulette wheel.
Learn more about Obama’s record on Social Security at the Meet Barack Obama site and check out McCain’s support of privatization at McCain Revealed. Click here to sign the American United For Change petition to McCain.
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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
5 Comments
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The only thing the American people need to realize is that the government has raped and pillaged the Social Security System since God knows when. Does everyone know that the government officials we elect get pensions (usual the entire amount they make while working) from the Social Security System, they never pay a cent into the system, from the presidents, first ladies, on down the line. I ask you is that fair? This is one MAJOR PROBLEM with OUR (we the people’s Social Security System) It wasn’t for the government. It was for the working people of America.
The next MAJOR PROBLEM of our Social Security System is again related to the government. The government has borrowed (actually taken) our surpluses. That money is OUR’S not theirs. It comes out of every working American’s every pay check. The government should never, never, never be allowed to touch a penny of it regardless of how much surplus builds up, because that build up would certainly be there for all of us that have paid into the system to help defray the costs of our insurance needs, our unemployment and raises at the beginning of the new years.
I say lets fix our Social Security System by really making laws that really forbid the government from dipping into it, and lets also make the government pay for their own security system if they want benefits when they retire. That seems the best solution to me. They have all the money. They can keep us at ground zero for making money, so let them have a certain amount taken out of their pay to fund their own System. And I don’t want to pay for it with higher taxes. We can’t afford higher taxes. We should never have to pay taxes on land we own, food we buy, or anything else. That’s just how we fund the government to take their trips and have more and more money. There has to be a stop somewhere where the working man/woman can live.
Social Security is a shining example of a Public Program designed as a safety net to protect our seniors ( like me) from slipping into poverty and to afford a bit of dignity and quality of life to our later years.
Why does McCain and the Republicans hate this noble idea so much? Could it be because it works so well that the American people might embrace other such Social and Economic programs designed to help All American, like Universal Health Care for example?
Does he fear that America has seen enough of Privatization which benefits the greedy and makes the rest of us needy?
Well what ever his reason, he is dead wrong.
Support Barack Obama and save Social Security for all of us.
I keep wondering why both Bush and McCain are bent on destroying senior citizens security. Maybe because both are rich so to heck with the average working people.
I read McCains plans for Social Security and he wants to secure them for everyone. He will not raise these taxes either. He talked about personal accounts but not as a substitute for Social Security. I wouldn’t mind that if I was younger. At least the government wouldn’t be able to get there hands on my money. It is nice McCain is offering a choice.
To curtail Social Security would be the “last straw”. Some 70 million
receive some kind of SS covering many critically essential needs.
The corporate privatized economy is unable and unwilling to meet the needs of working people with a living wage job and essential benefits. Profit maximization results in globalization, which will forever work to destroy whatever gains made in the past by unionized working people. Recent labor history (American Axle, etc.) shows this to be the case.
The American labor movement, unorganized working people, anti-war activists, millions concerned about public education, affordable housing, public health care, etc.etc. (the list of crises we now face goes on and on!) cannot realistically be resolved by simply expanding trade union membership. The trade unions are almost powerless to maintain standards of living today. The days of simple trade unionism as an effective tool for working people are over!
We must realize that the benefits secured traditionally through a good union job are no long possible. These traditional benefits must be secured politically and institutionalized and enforced by law. To survive as working people we must secure control of the economy through political means. That is, we need to form a new political party that rejects corporate power, money, and agendas. We need a new party to run and elect candidates at every level of government to end privatization, to end war, to end the looting of the economy by corporate pirates. We must end gangster, run-amok, unregulated capitalism to survive!
The labor movement must reject the corporate conrolled Democratic Party (that wants to continue war, privatized medicine, etc.) and form it’s own political party to represent politically the economic needs of working people. To educate and organize atomized and brain-washed working people it needs to create it’s ovn mass media (Labor perspectives are always kept out of the newspapers and tv).
Failure to recognize the crises faced by working people by Labor “leaders” and to continue with the “status quo” is to lead to disaster for everyone.
If Social Security is destroyed perhaps the last purchase from that Social Security check will be to a gun and head for Washington. This is no threat of civil war or “terrorism” but a statement of inevitable fact. When millions are pushed over the edge and into the gutter, when there is absolutely no hope left the anarchic consequences are inevitable.