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."
Where was the "promise" you refer to written?
A problem with the logic is that they are using income during working years as a surrogate for wealth. It doesn't work that way. Just because you had a high income during your working years doesn't mean you have a high wealth during your retirement years, particularly with the high taxes we are paying these days.
Not government run, government approved.
It doesn't have to be written. If that's the way they are going to try to weasle out of this, then they better plan to face the guillotine.
Wasn't SS supposed to be a safety net?
Is something wrong with passing on your life's savings and investments to your children? If not to them, where would you propose it go?
really? first, sorry about my small letters, I hope I don't lose credibility points for that. If you are genuinely concerned I suggest you listen to such things as last nights speech in it's entirety.
If someone who works hard all his life lives in poverty when they retire they made some really bad choices!
If some people, I know them, were to take the money they spend every week on cigarettes, lottery tickets, knick knacks, cell phones, extra cable tv packages, vacations, the list could go on and INVESTED this money throughout their working lives they would be well off. It's about choices! This is America, the greatest nation the world has ever known, anyone that works all their lives here and is still poor, I have absolutely no pity for them and I for one would never deny them their well deserved consequences.
I have other thing to do besides listen to more double speak political BS from the Beltway crowd, they don't give a ratsa$$ about us. Never have - never will.
The text is already posted elsewhere on FR no need for me to do it here.
How would you fund that?
How do we fund the people who already put their money there?
Giving cash to Congress to fix this is like throwing it into a pit. You'll never see it again, and social security will still go broke.
It's been tried before--over and over, in fact. By letting them increase taxes to fix this, we are simply putting more of our money at risk.
I've been working for 222 years now. I don't expect to ever see a dime of what I've already put in. If they enacted private accounts, at least I could keep what I earn on a going forward basis.
End it. Don't mend it.
Ooooops. I mean 22 years. It only seems like 222 years.
Not possible.
What about the poor slob who is 59? Screw him cause you got yours?
Someone's going to get screwed. The longer this problem festers, the more of us are going to get screwed.
As good as the ability of the Federal Government to tax.
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