Free Republic

Democrats rip GOP on Social Security planBy MIKE WILSON, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 21 minutes ago DES MOINES, Iowa - The Republican plan to privatize Social Security could cause huge debt for decades, a Democratic candidate seeking a House seat in Iowa, a state with a high concentration of elderly residents, said Saturday. "If the Republican plan is allowed to pass, future generations both here and across the country will be saddled with decades of debt and no guaranteed retirement security," Bruce Braley said in the Democrats' weekly radio address. Braley, 48, a lawyer from Waterloo, faces Republican Mike...

Back from the DeadMARIE COCCO June 27, 2006 WASHINGTON -- The corpse will be revived. Plans to resuscitate President Bush's stone-cold proposal to turn Social Security from a guaranteed insurance program into a patchwork of private savings accounts already are in the works. All it will take, says Grover Norquist, conservative strategist extraordinaire, is the election of another five conservative Republican senators -- enough to surmount procedural roadblocks by Democrats or those tremulous Republican moderates who would try to preserve the nation's most successful and best-loved government program. ``I believe that when there are 60 Republican senators we will move...

My democommie Congressman Pete Visclosky had a Social Security forum at 2:30 this afternoon. I figure setting an afternoon forum was to assure that nobody with a job could show up!! So I decided I need to take some time away from my business and give my congress critter a little heat! Usually my congressman's town meetings attract less than fifty people, so I was shocked to see the room jammed packed and people scrambling to open the divider into the adjacent room. Seems a co-sponsor of the forum was the Alliance for Retired Americans which I now know is...

Whenever I explain the Chilean Social Security Reform in my travels around the world, invariably the first questions I am asked are: How could such a pioneering reform happen in an emerging country like Chile? How was it done? It all began in 1956 when the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the Catholic University of Chile signed a three-year agreement of cooperation with the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago. The agreement was strongly promoted by Albion Patterson, the visionary representative in Chile of the US aid program, and was renewed twice, for a total of nine years....

As a 30-year-old economist, Jose Pinera revolutionized Chile's pension system in 1980 while he was secretary of labor and social security during the country's dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Pinera, the architect of the country's privitized system, is now an internationally-recognized advocate of replacing government "pay as you go" social security with private pensions where workers bankroll their retirements with investments in mutual funds. The Harvard and University of Chicago-educated Pinera is also the founder of the International Center for Pension Reform. Here are excerpts from an interview Pinera recently gave to The Associated Press: AP: Chile's military and police...

The 'cost of transition' is the latest buzz phrase bandied about by Democrats. Social Security was once referred to as 'the third rail' of politics. For non-New Yorkers this typical Eastcoast shorthand phrase needs explanation. New York Subways are electrically powered in three rails including a ground rail track. When an unfortunate victim, either accidently or deliberately, falls from a loading ramp and touches the third rail he is grounded and immediately fried. Such has happened to many reformers over the past half century. The opponents of change now have come to the hard reality that Americans want a discussion...

Even before the debate has truly begun over the centerpiece of President Bush's second-term domestic agenda - creating private retirement accounts within Social Security - White House and Congressional budget leaders have been floating the idea that it won't require a major increase in the federal budget deficit. This is dangerously misguided. Unwilling to raise taxes, Congress and the administration will have to borrow well over $1 trillion to turn the president's wish into reality. For a country that already needs to borrow $2 billion a day just to stay afloat, that gargantuan price tag for privatization is one reason...

The Big Idea Give 'Em Liberty March 2004 One of our political system's greatest virtues is that every vote counts. Now, one group of voters plans to move to one state, so that their votes count together. The Free State Project is a simple, if radical, concept: Mobilize enough people with libertarian views – lowering taxes, cutting social programs, privatizing schools, relaxing gun laws – to live in one state in order to create a viable third part that will shape local government. "The idea is that, incrementally, we'll move to a freer society." says founder Jason Sorens, a Yale...

<p>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is turning to some familiar and controversial territory to try to shave the costs of running government: inviting private firms to do it better and cheaper.</p> <p>In his State of the State address, Schwarzenegger offered his first concrete plan to turn to the private sector to help extract the state from its budget hole, urging lawmakers to reverse a state law restricting school districts' ability to farm out tasks such as bus driving and groundskeeping to private companies.</p>

Terrell, Landrieu disagree on plan Mike Hasten Posted on November 21, 2002 BATON ROUGE - It's past time for government to stop competing with the private sector, says U.S. Senate runoff candidate Suzanne Haik Terrell, who is endorsing the Bush administration's move to privatize more government services. Terrell proposed Wednesday what she calls the "Yellow Pages Test." "If we can find a good or service in the Yellow Pages, we ought to consider getting the government out of that business," the Republican said. "If the private sector can do it better and more efficiently, then they should be allowed to...