It is a sincere question. If it is true that new savings accounts will save Social Security, inquiring minds deserve an answer. I just saw a post here that the new proposals by our Democratic candidate to have saving accounts "in addition to" Social Security have nothing to do with it.
Yet the new American Dream Accounts proposed by Hillary at the DLC definitely make the claim it will save the Social Security program. People do not get to have it both ways.
My question: how does setting up personal savings account save Social Security....even assuming it needs saving?I have asked that over and over. I get no answer.
From Hillary's American Dream Initiative as presented at the DLC website:
An aging society has no choice but to act. Just as FDR ushered in the Social Security system in the last century, we need to make new provisions for economic security in this one. That means asking every employer to give workers the chance to save, and challenging every American to make the most of it.
American Dream InitiativeSounds to me like they think Social Security is threatened, and that instead of reinforcing it they want to start a new program. Correct me if I am wrong. Why put employers through the disruption of another program in which they must meet matching funds?
More about what the plan is. It sounds more and more like they are going to replace Social Security gradually with a program which will be phased in and called everything but what it is. Personal accounts, private accounts, Dream accounts.
The DLC/PPI is working with the right wing Heritage Foundation to "save" Social Security. This statement from their meeting disturbs me.
The bad news is that Congress needs to take a hard look at Social Security and figure out how to accommodate an increasingly healthy crop of older Americans, without putting excess burdens on younger citizens, the senators and other panelist said. Carper and Graham each cited the work that then-President Ronald Reagan and then-Speaker Tip O’Neill did together in the 1980s to stave off a Social Security crisis as a model for further reform efforts. Democrats and Republicans will need to cooperate again to tackle Social Security, and they will need to make tough choices, the two senators said. Reagan and O’Neill “told their bases things that they didn’t want to hear,” Graham said, adding that that kind of candor will be needed again.
Working with the right wing on Social SecurityActually Josh Marshall said it much better than I could.
But that's the essence of it: abolishing Social Security or not.Imagine for a moment that we were having a different sort of Social Security debate. In this alternative universe it wouldn't be about reform or privatization or who had the best plan to save Social Security. The issues would be different. The question would be whether we should abolish Social Security and replace it with a system of loosely-federally-regulated 401ks, or not.
It wouldn't be abolished overnight, of course, but phased out over time. So any oldsters collecting benefits now wouldn't need to worry. And the same would probably go for pre-fogies too ... say, anyone over 55.
But that's the essence of it: abolishing Social Security or not.
Well, guess what? That is exactly the debate we're having. Only many of Social Security's defenders don't seem to know it. It's not that they don't know it exactly. They, more than anyone, understand the stakes involved. But for all the great facts they're bringing to the table, they still seem content to frame the argument in a way that obscures the true issues involved and benefits their opponents immeasurably.
If the shoe were on the other foot, Republicans would not make the same mistake.
I think all the candidates are obscuring the issue for various reasons.
More from the link:
The DLC champions privatization of Social Security as a centerpiece of its program for the new century. Or in DLC speak, as Will Marshall, one of its founders, puts it, "using choice and competition to advance...the big social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare." The DLC provides bipartisan support for a Bush folly that, as Senator Tom Daschle says, would turn Social Security from a guarantee into a gamble.
Again, someone explain how these voluntary accounts will help Social Security in any way at all? Why is this even being proposed? And does Social Security need saving at all? And if it does, why pump all that money into something else?
Fogies and "pre-fogies" want to know.
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