Members
of Congress who spent Feb. 21-25 back home meeting with constituents heard
an earful about President Bush’s plans to privatize Social Security.
Most Democrats held forums specifically on the subject of Social Security,
while Republicans, like Eastern Oregon Congressman Greg Walden, tended
to sidestep the issue. Walden focused his “town hall” meetings
on measures to combat methamphetamine addiction.
Asking Oregonians what they think about Social Security privatization,
Senator Ron Wyden held town hall meetings in Bend, Medford and Portland.
He also met with union members at a Feb. 25 breakfast meeting.
Wyden’s Portland town hall, held Feb. 22, featured a panel that
included Oregon AFL-CIO President Tim Nesbitt, as well as representatives
from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP); a disability
rights group; and the pro-privatization Cascade Policy Institute.
Steve Buckstein of Cascade Policy Institute compared Social Security to
the Titanic, the biggest cruise ship of its day. “Social Security
is the biggest government program of our day,” Buckstein said, “and
its crew sees a financial iceberg coming.”
Nesbitt responded, if you’re headed for an iceberg, you want to
stay calm, not abandon ship. “Private accounts are a system of everyone
for himself, where what you own is what you get.” He also dismissed
what he called “trash talk” about the bonds held by the Social
Security Trust Fund — “a solemn obligation to America’s
workers.”
On Feb. 25, more than 100 union members attended a Portland breakfast
with Wyden that organizers said was the best-attended ever.
Wyden made his position clear right away: “I will never support
taking safe Social Security dollars and turning them over to Wall Street
equity traders so they can get another house in the Hamptons.”
“Do you want to tear up the safety net and replace it with Russian
roulette?” Wyden asked. “There’s no way to get to privatization
without massive borrowing or massive benefit cuts.”
Wyden said he could support other measures to encourage private saving
for retirement, and said he questions whether rich people like Donald
Trump should collect Social Security checks.
Congressman David Wu told constituents at a Feb. 25 town hall that he
is “utterly opposed” to Social Security privatization because
every such proposal involves cutting guaranteed benefits and/or borrowing
enormous sums of new money. Wu said Social Security needs to remain the
“secure” part of Americans’ retirement, which should
also include private pension funds and individual savings.
“Investments should be laid on top of Social Security, not sliced
out of it,” Wu said.
At a Feb. 26 forum on Social Security, Representative Earl Blumenauer
shared the stage with Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic
and Policy Research, an economic think-tank in Washington, D.C., that
opposes privatization.
Blumenauer contested Bush’s claim that his proposal won’t
change Social Security for workers over 55. Under the change to “price
indexing” — part of the Bush plan — Social Security
benefits would grow at a slower rate, amounting to a cut in benefits from
what participants over 55 can now expect.
Blumenauer said he advocates making the rich pay the same Social Security
tax as everyone else. Right now, the 6 percent of Americans with the highest
earned incomes pay no Social Security tax on the portion of their income
above $90,000 a year.
Weisbrot, an economist, took issue with the assumptions in the Social
Security Trustees report, which the president’s backers have used
as evidence in support of privatization.
The predicted shortfall in future Social Security revenues rests on a
pessimistic prediction of economic growth, Weisbrot said. But if those
predictions come true, then private accounts wouldn’t outperform
Social Security, because in the long term, stock prices can’t grow
faster than the underlying economy they are linked to. So either the economy
will do poorly and stocks won’t be a better investment than Social
Security, or the economy will do well and Social Security won’t
end up having a shortfall. “You can’t have it both ways,”
he said.
