Posted on 04/28/2005 6:38:41 PM PDT by Brilliant
WASHINGTON, April 28 - President Bush said tonight that Social Security should be adjusted so that benefits for people with lower incomes would grow faster than for those who were more affluent.
Mr. Bush said the change would go a long way toward solving the retirement system's problems and would keep a solemn pledge to people who have worked hard for a lifetime but have not amassed great wealth: "You will not retire into poverty."
Speaking at a White House news conference on the eve of the symbolic 100-day mark of his second term, Mr. Bush again pushed for voluntary personal retirement accounts within Social Security for younger workers. And he said again that he was open to good ideas from either party, provided the suggestions, if carried out, would not "raise the payroll tax rate or harm the economy."
While ruling out raising the 6.2 percent payroll tax rate for Social Security, perhaps significantly he did not rule out raising the ceiling, now $90,000, on which earnings are taxed for Social Security.
"As we fix Social Security, some things won't change," Mr. Bush said, recognizing that for decades any talk of changing the system has been considered the political equivalent of Russian roulette. "Seniors and people with disabilities will get their checks. All Americans born before 1950 will receive the full benefits."
The president also called on the Senate to pass his energy program, the outlines of which have already been endorsed by the House, so that the United States can be energy-independent. Among his ideas, which he said involve obtaining more energy through "innovative and environmentally sensitive ways," is drilling in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"My administration is doing everything we can to make gasoline more affordable," Mr. Bush said, alluding to a recent trend that polls show is annoying the American people and perhaps endangering him politically. "There will be no price-gouging at gas pumps in America."
The president also touched on several other hot-button issues. He declined to offer a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, but said they would begin to come home "as soon as possible," and he insisted that the United States and its allies were making progress there.
Mr. Bush said, too, that he stood by his embattled nominee for United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton, and that Mr. Bolton's by now well known abrasiveness might stand him and the United States in good stead.
"John Bolton is a blunt guy," he said during the hourlong session with reporters. "John Bolton can get the job done at the United Nations."
Mr. Bush and his top aides have repeatedly said that the United Nations needs to adapt to the 21st century instead of being little more than an international debating society.
But Mr. Bush dwelled heavily on his Social Security proposals, emphasizing, in response to a question, that any Congressional action that addressed the system's solvency - but did not allow for private accounts - would be unacceptable to him.
He said these accounts would allow only for safe, conservative investments, like Treasury bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, which has never defaulted. (The president's Democratic critics chided him recently for referring to the $1.7 trillion in Treasury securities that make up the Social Security trust fund, amassed by the current accumulating surplus, as little more than a pile of i.o.u.'s. These securities, too, are backed by the government's full faith and credit.)
Mr. Bush, in the fourth prime-time news conference of his presidency, said his two-month campaign to promote his ideas for Social Security had convinced him that the American people "understand that Social Security is heading for serious financial trouble." "Congresses have made promises they cannot keep for a younger generation," Mr. Bush said. By 2041, he asserted, "Social Security will be bankrupt."
Mr. Bush did not go into detail, in his opening remarks, on the inexorable trends that actuaries envision as baby-boomers move into retirement. Actuaries have forecast that the retirement system, which now takes in more than it pays out, will start to run a deficit in 2017.
From 2017 until 2041, the system could still pay full benefits by drawing on its store of Treasury securities in which the present incoming surplus is now invested. And starting in 2041 - the point at which Mr. Bush said bankruptcy would occur - the system would be able to pay benefits at only about 72 percent, unless changes are made in the meantime.
"Social Security is too important for politics as usual," Mr. Bush said, after months in which the White House and its Republican allies have argued bitterly with Democrats, who generally oppose the concept of individual retirement accounts within Social Security because they fear the change will undermine the system without fixing its admitted long-range problems.
As for opinion polls showing that many people are wary of his ideas for the retirement program, Mr. Bush said, as he has many times and in connection with many issues, that he does not worry about them. "You know," he said, "if a president tries to govern based upon polls, you're kind of like a dog chasing your tail."
If you work your entire life, earn lots of money, and pay thousands into the social security trust fund, but then you suffer setbacks and end up in poverty in your retirement, you apparently would be entitled to reduced benefits. You, poverty-stricken in your senior years, spent thousands to support others in their retirement, but now the system has breached its promise to you.
And just how good are those treasury securities?
The Prez did a good job of getting the issues and the proposals before the country.
It's hard to batter your message through the lefties' broadcast news monopoly.
And, now Social Security raises are higher than needed. It's a good idea to stop giving that much increase to the rich Social Security recipients, and leave it only for the poorer recipients.
...or I could be full of crap.
He's going to index the benefits according to your income. That's a poverty program.
"If a paper tries to report it's own ideology when it should report news, it's kind of like a chicken plucking it's own feathers"
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. - A. Dent
The only good thing about Bush's proposal is that it's DOA. I was previously in favor of social security reform. Now I'm against it. And I'm not the only one.
SS was never meant to be a retirement program - it was meant to be the ultimate safety net, so that the elderly, particularly those who had lost their savings during the Depression, would be protected. The problem is that the expectations of SS have gone way up.
Soak the rich! Soak the rich! After all, none of them worked for their money. They got it all from their rich Mommies and Daddies.
I just want the ability to "opt-out" of the pyramid scheme. Let me invest the money that the Feds would have squandered.
That's classic socialism.
Exactly.
True, it was meant to supplement retirement, not finance it. Even FDR wanted personal accounts to be part of socialist security.
That's 20th century thinking. We're in a brave new world where wealth redistribution becomes the cornerstone of a "conservative" Republican president's second term.
GWB is going to surpass even LBJ in the entitlements arena.
good grief !
I'd expect something like this from the dems... but wth is our side doing promoting this class warfare stuff and trying to stick it to the rich.
If reform means that I am going to get even less, I'm against it too. He sure does know how to antagonize his base.
I want private accounts, among other reasons, as a stepping-stone to eventual complete privatization of the system, but introducing this means-testing moves away from an eventual privatization of the system.
I wish Bush had stressed the wealth-building part of his proposal more. The problem with SS contributions is that they don't build wealth. Even if you live long enough to get a return on it, you have not created an asset that you can leave to your dependents and thereby create wealth.
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