Posted on 02/05/2016 8:24:43 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The U.S. came very close to having private retirement accounts as part of a sweeping Social Security reform. And, no, it wasn't under President George W. Bush, who put forward a workable plan that went nowhere. It was under President Clinton.
That surprising bit of news comes 18 years after the fact in a reminiscence by Cato Institute senior fellow Jose Pinera, who once upon a time served as Chile's secretary of labor and social security, and who designed that country's highly successful pension reforms in 1980. Pinera says that Clinton began thinking in earnest about privatizing part of Social Security back in 1995, after a discussion with former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, an ardent advocate for Social Security reform and, like Clinton, a moderate Democrat.
According to Pinera, Clinton saw private accounts as a way to cement his presidential record as a reformer. And the model for doing so that he had in mind was from Chile, where Pinera and a group of reformers created private retirement accounts that helped fuel that nation's decade-long growth boom. It was a rousing success.
Clinton even sent his former chief of staff, Mack McLarty, to Chile in 1996 to see how private personal accounts worked. In a letter to Pinera, he talked about how impressive Chile's program was, calling it "the mother of all reforms," adding: "We can learn a great deal from your country's bold initiative, which is widely envied throughout the hemisphere."
Three years later, in December 1998, Pinera attended a White House conference on Social Security reform. There, he outlined simple elements of the Chilean Model: "Every Chilean worker has a pension passbook -- I always carry one of them. The worker has his money put here in the passbook, and they know every month how much they have."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
But it was not to be. Clinton's involvement in the Monica Lewinsky scandal and his subsequent impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice derailed his plans. Despite being found not guilty, his reputation was in tatters. He never recovered, and his entire final-year agenda for his presidency went by the wayside -- a victim of his own insatiable appetites.
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Which makes me wonder ... why didn't ANYONE ELSE in Congress take this up?
It was not much different from Bush’s reform, but Dems by then were in obstruction mode.
Because they want to keep their jobs.
“
Which makes me wonder ... why didn’t ANYONE ELSE in Congress take this up?”
“Affairs of State take precedence over the affairs of State....” They were all outside walking the parapet.
Singapore has similar system and it works very well. Ten percent from the worker and ten percent from the employer. Since the worker has online access the employers find it difficult time getting behind on their payments.
Congress doesn’t want Social Security converted to a private pension system because then they won’t be able to tap that big, huge pile of money for buying votes from Democrats.
If no one has any idea what’s going on in Social Security then no one will easily notice that the system is short a trillion dollars or so.
and Monica ended up with herpes. Guess she should have asked for his medical records to be unsealed.
NO, they want to keep our MONEY!
Too many men get tempted to think with that instead of their brain.
I have a great idea, how about the gubmint leave me and my income alone, I will take care of myself. All they have to do is givee back my money, we’ll call it even.
BECAUSE THIS IS A LIE.
Blaming it on Monica is just distraction.
Congress didn’t want reform and they wouldn’t have it.
Congress wanted that SS surplus to spend.
They’d have blocked reform no matter what anyway.
Clinton was in office for 8 years. McLarty's trip to Chile was during his first term. Clinton never could move forward on Social Security reform because of the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment? I don't buy it. He simply didn't try.
The money goes in a "lockbox."
"Affairs of State take precedence over the affairs of State...."
They were all outside walking the parapet.
Governor Lepetomane: Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. [looks at his secretary's breasts] Hello, boys. You have a good night's rest? I missed you.
I seem to recall that G.W. Bush made a feeble attempt at the same thing. However, his political capital was waning at the time and AARP packed the first couple of hearings with their SEIU thugs to ensure nothing happened.
Yes it was, and Clinton and Gingrich had a loose framework to go forward or a handshake and then they both got caught with their pants down so to speak and it nixed it.
Also Greenspan told Clinton no non-choice aka the Gov't making you default to lets say an S & P 500 Fund. He was worried about the consequences and frankly in anyone's investment strategy their should be choices to get diversification.
If my memory was correct either Clinton's or Bush's plan would have allowed all us rubes to use the same funds within the Gov't "TSP", Thrift Savings Plan, which used to be about 7 to 10 mutual funds, rather broad and bland and if you looked deep they were run by that larger firm out of England who's name escapes me.
RE: I seem to recall that G.W. Bush made a feeble attempt at the same thing.
He made it a centerpiece of his 2000 campaign ( remember the LOCKBOX debate he had with Al Gore that was made fun of at SNL?)
Unfortunately, 9/11/2001 happened and that was the end of that.
Not long after he finally gave up, the housing collapse occured and investment portfolios tanked.
If Bush had succeeded and most people had followed the advice of the MSM and the banksters, then most people would have lost big time.
It would have been a nail in the coffin for the Republican party regardless of whether or not it had been a good idea.
I’ve spoken to a number of my colleagues and all of us had to pay on our tax returns. Was this tied to Social Security in some fashion?
If you count 14 trillion dollars as “or so” then you are correct. http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Tack on another 27 trillion for medicare, too.
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