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ISSUESRELATED STORIESNew York Times Social Security Agency Is Enlisted to Push Its Own RevisionOver the objections of many of its own employees, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort to publicize the financial problems of Social Security and to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution.
Jacob Weisberg Bush's First DefeatThe president has lost on Social Security. How will he handle it? George W. Bush's plan to remake the Social Security system is kaput. This is not a value judgment. It's a statement of political fact.
Manuel Riesco 25 Years Reveal Myths of Privatized Federal Pensions in ChileA quarter century after its inception, most [Childean] pensioners find themselves shortchanged, while the public coffers continue to carry most of the burden of federal retirement benefits.
Matthew Yglesias Understanding the Bush SS Plan... The important thing... is that what you're being promised by the Bush administration is worse, on average, not only than what you're being promised right now, but worse than what currently scheduled benefits can afford.
Doug Henwood Social Security, Revisited...Now's not the time to concede anything. Social Security's fine, and will be for decades. If it needs a "fix," it won't be for 30 or 40 years. It's urgent to save the system—not only for the material well-being of the elderly, but to preserve some of our last notions of social solidarity against the I–me–mine ethic of the marketizers. And for once, the task doesn't look hopeless.
Paul Krugman Spearing the Beast..."Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," declares Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."
Paul Krugman Many Unhappy Returns...Which brings us to the privatizers' Catch-22...any growth projection that would permit the stock returns the privatizers need to make their schemes work would put Social Security solidly in the black.
American Prospect A Bloody MessHow has Britain’s privatization scheme worked out? Well, today, they’re looking enviably upon Social Security.
American Prospect BUSH'S HOUSE OF CARDS: The Privatization FraudWhy We Need Social Security: Anthology of continuing coverage and commentary on Social Security.
Maya Rockeymoore Bamboozled: Destruction of Social Security Would Harm Black CommunitiesA big hoax is about to be pulled on the American people in the name of Social Security reform...African Americans will likely receive the shortest end of the stick.
MediaMatters.org Russert repeated Social Security privatization proponents' crisis rhetoricOn NBC's Meet the Press, moderator Tim Russert repeated the crisis rhetoric of proponents of the administration's plan to privatize Social Security...
Kevin Drum Social Security Doom and Gloom....As we all know — because President Bush told us yesterday — Social Security "is headed towards bankruptcy down the road." Specifically, according the Social Security trustees, the point at which full benefits can no longer be paid out comes 38 years from now in the year 2042. ...the chart shows the last decade's worth of Social Security predictions, and it turns out that back in 1994 the Social Security trustees were predicting that doomsday was....35 years away.
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ISSUE: Social Security PrivatizationSocial Security PrivatizationPrivatizing Social Security has been on the radar of Conservative Philanthropy since at least 1986, according to our grant list for "Social Security." Though President Bush reduced support for the initiative with his bamboozlepalooza tour in 2005, in 2006 he is now claiming he wants to get on with privatization after the mid-term elections.
Jonathan Weisman Social Security Legislation Could Be ShelvedNational Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas M. Reynolds will recommend to the House Republican leadership that the party drop its effort to restructure Social Security, at least for this year, House Republican aides confirmed yesterday. Richard W. Stevenson Bush's Road Gets Rougher"..on his call to reshape Social Security [Bush] is dangerously close to a fiery wreck that could have lasting consequences for his standing and for the Republican Party." Bill Berkowitz Richard Viguerie's Army Attacks Social SecurityUSA Next, an organization founded by Viguerie as the United Seniors Association in 1991, backs Bush in battle to privatize Social Security Paul Krugman Borrow, Speculate and Hope...it is now apparent that the Bush administration's privatization proposal will amount to [this]: borrow trillions, put the money in the stock market and hope...Once you realize that privatization really means government borrowing to speculate on stocks, it doesn't sound too responsible, does it? But the details make it considerably worse. Paul Krugman Inventing a crisisPrivatizing Social Security - replacing the current system, in whole or in part, with personal investment accounts - won't do anything to strengthen the system's finances. If anything, it will make things worse. Nonetheless, the politics of privatization depend crucially on convincing the public that the system is in imminent danger of collapse, that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it... ... very little about the privatizers' position is honest. They come to bury Social Security, not to save it. They aren't sincerely concerned about the possibility that the system will someday fail; they're disturbed by the system's historic success. For Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people's lives better and more secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it. Nouriel Roubini Social Security Privatization as the Mother of All Con-Man Smoke-and-Mirrors Shell-Games... when you carefully look at the facts, it becomes clear that the proposed partial Social Security privatization is literally a Con Man Smoke-and-Mirrors Shell Game that - in the form it has been proposed - will not lead to any of the alleged benefits argued by its supporters. It is amazing the amount of misinformation that one reads about social security privatization... www.nathannewman.org SS Privatization: GOP DeceptionsGo GOP social security privatizers!Read this commentary today by former GOP Congressman Vin Weber from the Wall Street Journal. He's trying to argue that because some GOPers ran on private accounts in Social Security and won, that shows how much popular support there is for SS privatization. But the key phrase in his article is this one: "They promised to preserve the benefits of all current retirees and those nearing retirement." Which is a nice promise and when you bullshit the public, you often can get shortterm political gain. But read the sentence again. What is says first is that there is no promise that most working people paying into the social security system will get full benefits. Second, if you take a big chunk of social security taxes and put them into private accounts, that means you have to use a chunk of income taxes or other general revenue to pay for current retirees. So here is what social security privatization means for young workers: (1) Your guaranteed benefits will be slashed and if your personal account goes south in an Enron-style mess, you will be eating cat food in retirement. (2)While it sounds like free money, you will actually be paying for those private accounts through increased income or other taxes. (3)Therefore, the scam is that young workers get to pay double taxation, for present retirees and again to cover the costs of their own accounts. Cute bait and switch, huh? The GOP gets to sound all progressive and pro-young worker, when they really are screwing them as thoroughly as possible. Paul Krugman has long been skewering Bush over the deceptive math involved in these proposals. TomPaine.com Social Security In The 2002 Elections: Candidates Won By Renouncing PrivatizationThe conservative crusade to "privatize" Social Security played an important role in the 2002 election -- but not in the way that most supporters of this radical idea might have hoped. After more than a decade of aggressive marketing by right-wing interest groups, this was the first national election in which the privatizers might have gotten their dream scenario: a political debate over specific plans put forward by a sitting President -- and embraced by many in the House and Senate -- for diverting Social Security taxes and cutting benefits in order to fund private stock market accounts. The debate, however, turned into a rout. The privatizers, when challenged, changed their colors and fled the field. New York Times Report Predicts Deep Benefit Cuts Under Bush Social Security PlanOpponents of President Bush's plan to create personal investment accounts within Social Security released a report today concluding that the administration's approach would lead to deep cuts in retirement benefits and still require trillions of dollars in additional financing to keep the system solvent. The report, by Peter A. Diamond, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Peter R. Orszag, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution... ...The report concluded that...monthly benefits...would be well below benefits promised under current law even after taking account of the returns from a personal investment account... Under one of the commission's proposals, the report said, total benefits would be 10 percent below current-law benefits for low-income people, 21 percent below current-law benefits for middle-income people and 25 percent below current-law benefits for upper income people. Under the other proposal, the reductions in total benefits would range from 21 percent to 27 percent, and would be even larger if adjusted for the risk of investing in the stock market, the report said. The benefit reductions would be smaller for people who reach retirement age in the next three or four decades... Also see:Center on Budget and Policies report (pdf) The American Prospect Commission Impossible: Why Bush is abandoning Social Security reformIt appears that President Bush's Social Security Commission, packed with privateers and Cato Institute members, has nonetheless deadlocked and run out of steam, signaling perhaps an end to this administration's attempts to privatize the system. Resistance to the plan was led by Republican Congressman Tom Davis (VA), who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, and who fears that Republican candidates may be saddled with the plan. Also see:Cato Institute's Social Security Privatization website Paul Krugman writes that the commission and its authors are monumental liars.
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RELATED STORIESGrants to research "social security"
Social Security Rolls The Fainthearted Faction
There Is No Crisis.com
Allan Sloan Bush's Social Security Sleight of HandIf you read enough numbers, you never know what you'll find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts.
Editorial Editorial: Social Security/A dodgy privatization planIn a desperate effort to rejuvenate support for privatizing Social Security, a group of congressional Republicans this week announced a new plan to create private retirement accounts using the program's temporary revenue surpluses. The plan is so weird and ill-conceived that it wouldn't merit comment, except that prominent GOP lawmakers have rallied around it in a way that perpetuates all the misconceptions about Social Security and creates new risks to its future.
MediaMatters.org NY Times repeated falsehood about race and Social SecurityA June 19 New York Times article repeated the false claim that Social Security shortchanges African-Americans because of their lower-than-average life expectancies. In fact, both the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have refuted this claim.
Richard Morin and Jim VandeHei Social Security Plan's Support DwindlingMost Don't Back Bush Idea, Poll Finds President Bush yesterday said his plan to restructure Social Security would improve the program's long-term stability without shrinking the retirement income of older Americans. But a new Washington Post-ABC News survey found a clear majority of the public does not believe that.
UAW Stop SS Privatization page
MarketWatch.com Bush lobbying effort skirts lawThe Bush administration has spent millions of dollars in the past two months on its campaign to overhaul Social Security, narrowly skirting laws that prohibit spending of taxpayer funds to indirectly lobby Congress.
Josh Marshall Thomas Saving's deceptive budgetary calculationsSaving recently signed on to be the Social Security spokesman for Progress for America, one of the two main money-fronts the White House has pushing privatization. Also see:
AP Bush faces tough going on Social SecurityGOP pollsters: Public skeptical on private accounts
Matt Stoller Is the privatization scheme just a junk mail operation?It appears that USA Next, the front group for Social Security privatization, was really just a junk mail and spam operation in disguise to benefit Richard Viguerie in the 1990s. It appears that it engaged mostly in scaring up donations from conservative activists before becoming a corporate shell for pharmaceutical industry and energy industry money and lobbying. Also see:
Max Sawicky PACK OF LIES[The] Leadership of the Social Security Administration has been captured by enemies of the program... It's bad enough [when] you get political commercials in their voice mail system...[but now] they have a full-blown slide show of Bushist propaganda being distributed [on their website][apparently created by the Cato Institute's Social Security Privatization Project].
MediaMatters.org USA Today Social Security commentary riddled with falsehoodsn a January 14 column in USA Today, Stefani D. Carter, identified as a former fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a current student at Harvard Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, made false claims to argue that Social Security faces an imminent threat and that private accounts are the solution.
Paul Krugman The Iceberg Cometh...One thing I haven't seen pointed out, however, is the extent to which the White House expects the public and the media to believe two contradictory things. The administration expects us to believe that drastic change is needed, and needed right away, because of the looming cost of paying for the baby boomers' retirement. The administration expects us not to notice, however, that the supposed solution would do nothing to reduce that cost.
BlueLemur.com National Center for Public Policy Research scams elderly with Social Security fundraising letters blasting liberalsThinktank preys on seniors in Social Security scare campaign Also see:
Matthew Yglesias There is No Social Security CrisisLet's say that again: There is no Social Security crisis.
MediaMatters.org Carlson, Wash. Post misinformation on Social Security's "solvency" furthered Bush administration's crisis rhetoricCNN co-host Tucker Carlson and The Washington Post bolstered the Bush administration's crisis rhetoric on Social Security by providing misleading accounts of the federal program's "solvency."
News Analysis Most G.O.P. Plans to Remake Social Security Involve Deep Cuts to Tomorrow's Retirees...nearly every leading Republican proposal on Capitol Hill acknowledges that private accounts by themselves do little to solve the system's projected shortfall of at least $3.5 trillion. Instead, those proposals rely on deep cuts in benefits to future retirees.
Atrios The Social Security Media Fix Is InDo you know why? Cavuto's Jordan Kimmel of the Magnet Investment group told us. Cavuto asked him: "Jordan Kimmel, if we start seeing that [privatization], that's a lotta money that makes its way to guys like you right? "Oh, it's just another, another bushel of money. The money that's been on the sidelines in the bonds. The money that's in Social Security. Again, I think you will see a certain privatization happen. And again, it's an avalanche of money and there's just so much money on the sidelines. That's why the market has been so strong for months now." Also see:Political Animal: Man on the street? Not quite.
Dean Baker Anti-Social SecurityThe battle for Social Security's survival is under way. In a key maneuver recently, N. Gregory Mankiw, George W. Bush's chief economic adviser, explicitly floated the idea of cutting benefits, a necessary but unmentioned part of the White House's privatization plan.
Washington Post Social Security Privatization would hand Wall Street $9.4 billion windfall...according to a University of Chicago study to be released today
Chris Mooney John Zogby's Creative PollsThe American Prospect's Chris Mooney picks apart John Zogby and his dishonest polls for the Cato Institute that purport to show public support for privatizing social security. Of course, when Zogby asks about SS privatization, he doesn't mention that such privatization could have negative consequences, such as cuts in guaranteed benefits
Paul Krugman Fear of All SumsTo make sense of what passes for debate over Social Security reform, one must realize that advocates of privatization ... are determined not to understand basic arithmetic. Otherwise they would have to admit that such accounts would weaken, not strengthen, the system's finances.
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