Free Republic

With the next round of Democratic presidential candidate debates upon us, we will surely hear more about government activism to fix racial inequalities. Inequality is real and needs attention. According to the Urban Institute, average white household wealth in 2016 was $171,000 compared with average black household wealth of $17,409. Sen. Cory Booker wants government to make deposits into savings accounts for low-income children to the tune of up to $50,000 each. Sen. Kamala Harris proposes $100 billion in government subsidies for black homeownership. These kinds of proposals may win some black votes, but should they? Will they really make...

Across the country, state and local governments are facing huge unfunded liabilities for their employee pension plans. And then there’s Social Security. But three neighboring Texas counties, which opted out of Social Security 30 years ago by creating personal retirement accounts, have avoided a fiscal train wreck while providing retirees with even more retirement income. Galveston, Matagorda and Brazoria County employees, many of them union members, have seen their retirement savings grow every year, even during the Great Recession. If state and local governments—and Congress—are really looking for a path to long-term sustainable entitlement reform, they might start with what...

FRED THOMPSON may have come late to the presidential race, but the former Tennessee senator has produced the most courageous proposal of the campaign. Mr. Thompson's Social Security plan is not as progressive or as balanced as we would prefer. Yet in a campaign in which candidates have preferred to dodge difficult choices on Social Security, Mr. Thompson's proposal has attractive elements and deserves applause for making some tough choices. Mr. Thompson would cut benefits for future retirees from the unsustainable amount currently promised; he would combine that move with voluntary private accounts sweetened with a generous match from the...

Thursday, November 15, 2007 What Fred Said [Larry Kudlow] I just sat down with presidential candidate Fred Thompson, for an interview that will air tonight on Kudlow & Company. The former Tennessee senator was in good form. He attacked Warren Buffet’s tax-hike proposal on the rich as totally wrong, and Buffett himself as nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democratic party. He agreed with Dick Armey that the GOP will lose if it departs from the first principles of limited government and lower tax rates. He called the farm bill “disgraceful” and would veto it if he were president....

One of the aspects of Fred Thompson's campaign for President that has appealed to me is that I've always had the sense that he was willing to take on tough issues. Early on he said that he'd be talking about things that might cause him to lose the race, but he was prepared for that. Last week, he took on the toughest of issues, Social Security, the so called third rail of politics, that will kill anyone who dares suggest any changes to the system. Unlike Barack Obama, who is not touching the third rail himself, but rather throwing taxpayers...

Candidates for Congress get questionnaires from many organizations. Most encourage us to file our answers on line. All but one have assured us that our “answers will not be edited” or censored. There was one, glaring exception, the North Carolina “Edukashun” Association. This group keeps their answers private, sharing them only with their state leaders and their “member-convenors” who interview us in district to see if we’re really toeing the party line. Answers are never shared with union members. Okay, let’s break the embargo. Here are some of my answers, and I welcome responses from teachers who agree, or disagree,...

Recent research by behavioral psychologists might shed some light on why President Bush had difficulty in selling his concept of private retirement accounts as a central feature of reforming Social Security. As you might recall, the president promoted the plan through the idea of moving to an "ownership society" and providing the opportunity of choice regarding our retirement funds. However, according to a team of psychologists from Swarthmore and Stanford, who discussed the results of their work recently in the New York Times, Americans do not uniformly welcome more choices into their lives. Specifically, whereas higher income, better educated individuals...

Delphi's bankruptcy filing -- a result of mounting, unsustainable pension costs incurred decades ago -- was grim news for its creditors, its stockholders, and its tens of thousands of workers. But it was also a warning of things to come: for the entire American auto industry, and for Social Security as well. Delphi was a GM division until its spinoff in 1999. As part of that deal, America's largest auto maker granted over 4,000 Delphi employees the right to return to GM. Now, those workers are taking General Motors up on its generous promise. GM will take responsibility for their...

So how do we fix it? Well, maybe you better take a seat. I do not believe we should go to government-sponsored personal investment accounts. As I stated before, I believe that the original intent was to provide a sort of insurance policy against market fluctuations, and I think that was a good and right intent, so I'd like to keep it that way. Personal investment accounts do not accomplish that end. Given a substantial market failure, such as the one in 1929, even money market accounts (considered to be among the most stable and reliable investment accounts) would suffer...

FDR PROPOSED PRIVATE ACCOUNTS by Rod D. Martin, J.D. August 19, 2005 www.theVanguard.orgTo hear today’s Democrats talk, Franklin Roosevelt would be spinning in his grave if he heard today’s debate about Social Security private accounts. They’re only half right. He’d be spinning if he heard today’s Democrats. Roosevelt was many things, but he was no fool, not on this point. The man who gave us the New Deal understood perfectly the limitations of Social Security. In honest moments, politicians correctly note that “Social Security was never meant to pay for 100% of your retirement.” And to pay for the part...

SANTIAGO, Chile I made a pilgrimage to Santiago seeking to resolve the Social Security debate with a simple question: What would Pablo Serra do? I wanted to compare our pensions to see the results of an accidental experiment that began in 1961, when he and I were friends in second grade at a school in Chile. He remained in Chile and became the test subject; I returned to America as the control group. By the time we finished college, both of our countries' pension systems were going broke. Chile responded by pioneering a system of private accounts in 1981. America...

Lawmakers and interest groups are gearing up for a fight this fall over Social Security, each side hoping to use the retirement and disability program's 70th birthday to build momentum. An electronic card from the opposite side of the debate, circulated by the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security, or CoMPASS, shows a Social Security birthday cake sliced and served. Without major reform, it warns, children will be left with the crumbs.

...It's time for a new approach. But, before I tell you what it is, understand why the current efforts are failing: * Americans have grown used to Social Security over 70 years, and change is both threatening and confusing. * Reform has no strong constituency to rally support. Financial-services firms, for example, might benefit from the proposed personal accounts, but, at the same time, these firms fear that strict regulations, applied to the new accounts, would spread to 401(k) plans and other lucrative tax-favored plans that currently exist. * Opponents, mainly AARP (the seniors' lobby), have mounted a wildly distorted...

The recent annual report issued by the Social Security Board of Trustees demonstrates with undeniable clarity that Social Security faces a looming financial crisis. Worse still, the report shows Social Security's lurch toward insolvency has accelerated. In just a little more than a decade, Social Security will begin to run a deficit, the study shows. Deficits will continue and amplify every year well beyond the turn of the next century. Despite early protestations from many on Capitol Hill that "there is no crisis," few serious observers of the current state of Social Security hold out hope the system can survive...

The Young and the Ripped-off It was just about 35 years ago that the youth movement made one of its most famous imprints on American history when thousands of college kids and 20-somethings marched on the capital in Washington to protest the Vietnam War. The peacenik hippies commanded headlines by burning their draft cards and reciting the memorable chant: "Hell no, we won't go." Well, the youth movement is alive and well in America, but this time the students aren't denouncing war, but taxes -- Social Security payroll taxes to be precise. This Sunday, several thousand college-aged kids (Generation-Y) and...

The conventional Beltway wisdom says Social Security reform is dead, thanks to near-unanimous Democratic opposition. Well, not so fast. Republican reformers are introducing a new plan to invest Social Security surplus funds into personal accounts that has the potential to shake up the debate. Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint are calling for legislation to bring an immediate halt to the ongoing political raid on the surplus payroll taxes.... Instead of spending this retirement money, the reformers would allow individual workers to divert every surplus Social Security dollar--from now until the extra cash runs out in...

Key House Republicans crafted Social Security legislation Wednesday that shuns the painful measures needed to assure long-term solvency and omits President Bush's call for personal accounts financed with payroll taxes. Instead, the measure showcases a promise, designed to reassure seniors, that Social Security surplus funds will be used only to create individual accounts that differ sharply from Bush's approach. Despite the differences from Bush's proposals, Democrats quickly attacked the legislation, which is emerging in different forms in the House and Senate. Sen. Max Baucus (news, bio, voting record), D-Mont., called it "a smaller version of a bad idea. That bad...

With the acquiescence of their leaders, key House Republicans are drafting Social Security legislation stripped of President Bush's proposed personal accounts financed with payroll taxes and lacking provisions aimed at assuring long-term solvency. Instead, according to officials familiar with the details, the measure showcases a promise, designed to reassure seniors, that Social Security surplus funds will be held inviolate, available only to create individual accounts that differ sharply from Bush's approach. Under current law, any Social Security payroll tax money not used to finance monthly benefits is in effect lent by Social Security to the Treasury, which uses it to...

Bush Backs Soc. Sec. Bill Without Accounts By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 30 minutes ago President Bush encouraged a Republican senator on Tuesday to offer Social Security legislation that would not include private investment accounts. The White House said the president still was committed to allowing workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes. Bush's nod to Utah Sen. Bob Bennett's plan comes as public polls show that most Americans do not support the president's handling of the Social Security issue. Congress has been deadlocked on it. Bennett said that during a luncheon with other Republican senators at...

RALEIGH, N.C. - President Bush's proposal to allow taxpayers to invest part of their Social Security taxes would have an amplified, negative effect on farm families who depend on the government program in retirement, Rep. Bob Etheridge (news, bio, voting record), D-N.C., said Saturday. "Farm families have tight budgets, and most don't have access to employer retirement accounts such as 401(k) plans. In fact, three out of four farmers fund their own retirement. They depend on Social Security when the crop yield is low or the weather is bad," Etheridge, a member of the House Agriculture Committee and a part-time...