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THE GUTTING OF SOCIAL SECURITY
Sticking to his program to rob the poor to pay the
rich, Bush is proposing to privatize Social Security.
He threatens to turn a very successful program of 70 years into to a
stock market gamble. This should remove all doubt about Bush's totally
anti-peoples', anti-democratic purpose. It puts millions of older retired
workers back into poverty. For
instance, according to an article in the Washington
Post, 1/10-16/05 :
The change would save trillions of dollars in
scheduled expenditures and solve Social security's long-term deficit, but at a
cost. According to the Social Security Administration's actuary, a middle class
worker retiring in 2022 (present young waterfront workers take note) would see
guaranteed benefits cut by 9.9 percent.
By 2042, average monthly benefits for middle and high income workers
would fall by more than a quarter. A
retiree in 2075 would receive 54 percent of the benefit now promised."
“Its
like saying elderly people today should live at a 1940 standard of living, says Robert
Greenstein, executive director of the liberal Center for Budget and Policy
Priorities. Part of our social
contract has been to allow seniors to participate in rising standards of living
rather than consigning them to some second-class status in retirement.”
Further on, the article points out:
“Peter
R. Orszag, a Brookings Institution economist who heads the Pew Charitable
Trust's bipartisan Retirement Security Project, counters that there are less
drastic ways to cover the cost of trust fund redemptions than Bush is
contemplating. The White House could consider rolling back its tax cuts, the
size of which, he says, dwarf Social Security's deficit.
Over 75 years, the presidents tax cuts will cost the treasury $11
trillion, nearly triple Social Security's gap during that
time.”
In
addition, the Washington Post, 2/10/05 reports: “And
what about private accounts?”. . . But as the
White House budget director Josh Bolton told Congress
earlier this
week: “The
private accounts, do not, in themselves solve the full Social Security problem.”
They
don't, in
fact, even narrow the gap between promised Social Security benefits and projected tax
revenues." Another source exposing the phony reasons offered by Bush to
steal from our elder citizen, is offered by Paul Krugman, nationally syndicated
economist appearing in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. He takes on Bush's
argument that "private accounts" will pay off for retired workers
because the economy will expand and raise the stock market. Krugman points out
that if the economy expands that much, there will be enough money in the Social
Security fund to keep it solvent without any change.
So
there you have it. Bush's program is
a program to rob workers and the middle class to pay the rich.
How
long will we allow Bush to get away with highway robbery?
He has to be stopped or the young people will soon be paying through the
nose along with an arm and a leg.
It
is incumbent on all of us to holler to the high heavens. Protest must pour into
the Congress and the President to keep hands off Social Security.
Do so now. Write letters of
protest. Get your friends to write. Talk
up defense of Social Security wherever you go.
The time has come to stop Bush's legalized highway robbery.
In
addition, the time has come to build a powerful union movement against Bush's
lousy program. Enough is enough.
Rally
workers for unionism and Social Security with an appropriate slogan:
WITH
A UNION
EVERY WORKER'S A WINNER!
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