Social Security privatization should be election issue, Gephardt says

St. Louis Post-Dispatch ^ | 4-15-02 | Jon Sawyer

[FairWitness]

WASHINGTON - House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt says that Republicans have a secret plan to undermine the Social Security retirement benefits of millions of the elderly -- and that he's determined to smoke them out.

House Deputy Majority Whip Roy Blunt says it's the Democrats who have a not-so-secret plan: to frighten voters in the congressional election this fall with supposed cuts in Social Security that no Republicans in fact support.

[FairWitness]

Time to scare the senior citizens into voting Democrat again!

[chiefqc]

The only reason Gepfart is talking about SS is so he does not have to cut into his busy schedule to balance his mothers checbook.

[FairWitness]

Here is a Table (I had to transcribe it from a bar chart in the hard copy of the paper) showing that the only age group that does not support (or break even in the case of the 55-64 group) privatization is the 65+ group, which will not be affected (except in Gephardt's scare mongering nightmare) anyway!

Investing social Security Contributions

Support by Age Group

Age Group	Support (%)	Oppose (%)
18-34	71	26
35-44	70	25
35-44	70	25
45-54	61	35
55-64	47	47
65+	30	63

[FairWitness]

Sorry, I duplicated the 35-44 age group data in the table above, but the data is correctly transcribed otherwise.

[RichardsSweetRose]

It's no wonder the Democarats stay in control--When will we wake up and realize it is time to take back control of our lives from the Government.

[toenail]

Pick one:

_ Euthanasia
_ Labor camps for your children
_ Privatizing Social Security

[Cyrano Jones]

Time to scare the senior citizens into voting Democrat again!

It's a very fine line they have to walk, scaring seasoned citizens enough to get them to ignore the facts, but not scaring them so much that their health suffers in a period when Republicans have virtually blocked all access to health care and prescription drugs. The calculus of Democratic domestic terrorism is indeed complex.

On the bright side, at least Gephardt still offers some hope that we may be able to control our own retirement accounts. The Republicans seem to have been completely mute on the subject for several months. At least the idea is not completely dead.

cj

[FairWitness]

Republicans have virtually blocked all access to health care and prescription drugs.

A rather extreme statement. I guess we will be seeing the headlines about masses of seniors dying in the streets very soon now.

On the bright side, at least Gephardt still offers some hope that we may be able to control our own retirement accounts.

I think you have the two parties mixed up. Mr. Gephardt apparently opposes any privatization ("Gephardt contends that even partial privatization of Social Security would force a reduction in benefits to people currently retired,- - - ") so how is he offering hope of being "able to control our own retirement accounts"? If you mean a system outside of Social Security, we already have that option.

[Free the USA]

Check the Bump List folders for articles related to and descriptions of the above topic(s) or for other topics of interest.

[Cyrano Jones]

Sorry. forgot to add the tags.

cj

[Cyrano Jones]

oops. I meant "I forgot to add the <sarcasm></sarcasm> tags

cj