Republicans linking Social Security and Pension Reform

[TayTay]

An article in Today's Boston Globe talks about plans by the GOP to link discussions on funding problems in Social Security to problems with the Pension system. The Republicans hope to restart the dead issue of carving private accounts out of SSI and use it to bolster their argument that the 'retirement system' as a whole is in trouble.

Here is the link to the Globe article: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/19/gop_links_bush_plan_to_overhaul_of_pension/

Excerpts from the Globe story follow:

Senator Kent Conrad said he has told both Bush and Thomas that he would discuss using private accounts to bolster Social Security if it is part of a broader discussion of retirement savings and looming shortfalls in Medicare and other programs. He said he's looking to establish a working bipartisan group of lawmakers interested in a broad approach to the issue.

''All of them are related, and I don't think there's going to be meaningful progress until all of them are on the table," said Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota. ''You can't get from where we are down to where we need to be with one piece of the puzzle. You need to have much more in play."

A wave of recent defaults on pension plans by big employers -- most notably the bankruptcy of United Airlines, which left longtime workers with a fraction of the retirement funds they had saved over the years -- has intensified interest in legislation to tighten companies' pension contribution requirements and to shore up the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the agency that insures private plans. The agency reported a $23.3 billion deficit at the end of the last fiscal year.

Many Democrats and their labor union constituency are particularly anxious to see companies held accountable for their workers' pensions.

Further on in the article, Rep Richard Neal (D-MA) notes that linking a financial fix for SSI with pension reform is a powerful idea and has him worried as well:

Still, the effort has some Democrats concerned that Republicans will use a pension bill as a Trojan horse for private Social Security accounts.

At a Ways and Means Committee hearing last month, Representative Richard E. Neal asked Thomas to guarantee that GOP leaders would not try to tack on private Social Security accounts to a pension reform bill in a conference committee, a point in the process when Democrats would have little say in the bill's contents. Thomas sidestepped the question, saying he would not ''play gotcha."

Neal, a Springfield Democrat, said, ''We have to be mindful of this. . . . It's hard for us not to be in favor of encouraging vehicles for retirement savings. We all agree the American people don't save enough. But we can't allow a privatization of Social Security."

Incorporating Social Security into a pension bill won't be easy, Republicans acknowledge. Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr. of Florida, a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, said he fears that any broad retirement security package that includes Social Security private investment accounts will be a nonstarter with Democrats and others who want to preserve the existing system.

''The chairman's trying to put together a package that has broad-based appeal, and that can get the job done. But I'm not sure it will," said Shaw, a Republican who has offered his own proposal to create private accounts without cutting benefits. ''I would hope it would, but the thousand-pound gorilla is the Social Security issue. How you can tip the scales on that, I don't know."

[Vickers]

1. Gee, that's about as valid as the Iraq-9/11 link

These cowardly traitors will do anything to steal poor folks' money.

[TayTay]

2. The problem is that you can see the argument forming

And it is a powerful one. The Rethugs have very smart PR people and if they manage to to turn this into a debate on 'the retirement crisis' then the Dems current stance becomes much harder.

I hope the Dems are working on a response to this that keeps the two issues separate. I really see this as a big problems.

[wisteria]

8. Here we go again!

The repubs trying to distort and blur the issues. The way they are trying to shove these SS Private accounts on people is just despicable. This just shows me Bush is out to create that legacy he so badly wants by screwing the American people and creating the begins of his so "Ownership Society". After the last election we shouldn't put anything past them, they are willing to do anything in order to win. No lie, no distortion, no threat,no corruption and no payoff is to much for this administration if it allows them to achieve their objectives.

[politicasista]

12. self-delete

[BlueIris]

14. Kick.

[brokensymmetry]

3. Those rethuglican slime.

I know I shouldn't hate. But I am beginning to get there.

They won't be satisfied until everyone but the top 1% is rotting in an open sewer.

I hope that miserable excuse for a pResident gets impeached and their stinking party gets marginalized to the point of complete inconsequence.

[acmejack]

7. Just starting to hate them?

You are a far better person than I! I have hated them for quite a while now.

[MsUSA]

17. Speaking of that top 1%: my husband and I were visiting my

sister and her house mate this weekend, we were lounging, talking, having coffee and watching HGTV on television. On this particular program there was this couple who had out grown their home and bought a new one, but they needed to add on a "couple" of things to the new home, like a pool, a bath house with a copper roof, a sauna, and a baseball diamond. Along with these needs, they had it completely landscaped with shrubbery that filled up two giant semi truck loads!! Unreal, and all I could think of was I wonder how much money they really do pay in taxes. It was just sicking, I can't watch a lot of the shows on HGTV anymore.

[Mass]

4. They will not be satisfied until they kill SS anyway the can.

[Island Blue]

5. Our Democratic leaders have to find a way of framing this

so that folks can understand what the Repukes are trying to do. They are trying to take away ALL financial security for future of working people in this country. I guess when that is accomplished people will be even easier to manipulate and control.

I really wish we would start hammering away at the links between National Security and personal financial security (including the need to keep Social Security and personal pensions). There really are some links between the two.

[rox63]

6. These are two entirely separate matters

Even though they are both about BushCo stealing our financial security from us. Dean, Reid and Pelosi need to smack this down right away.

[CBHagman]

9. We should link this to corporate scandal.

I went through the roof when I read that companies had used pension funds into which long-term employees had paid (and from which they were promised benefits) to give dividends to stockholders and bonuses to executives. Uh, isn't that misappropriation of funds?

As far as I can see, the 'cans have a number of weak spots that we should bring up in every phone call, every letter to the editor, every political discussion:

*The corporations bailing out of their pension plans broke faith with their employees. People who work hard and play by the rules -- and, in the case of some employees, sacrificed for the long-term good of their companies -- deserve to have the other end of the bargain held up.

*Bush has gotten us in debt, period, and he's essentially running the country on the credit card. We're disturbingly in debt to the Chinese, for example. Bush's policies have made the country more financially vulnerable.

*The Republicans' solution to everything is to create more tax-free accounts (or tax breaks) skewed to the wealthiest. Here in the real world, most people do not have much disposable income. Many of us live paycheck to paycheck. The tax-free accounts are of very limited value.

*The Republicans are the true proponents of class warfare, giving extra breaks to the wealthy and tightening the screws on the vulnerable, plus trying to create resentment by pushing the notion that Social Security is a cash balance we should just be able to collect. It doesn't work that way.

I could go on, but perhaps I'd best stop here.

[blm]

16. There are alot of Enron's out there and BushInc wants SS funds to go

to these corporations targeted for "safe investments" to help cover their fraud, imo.

[sadiesworld]

10. More and more people are waking up to the fact that

* and the republicans are hellbent on destroying the working classes. Yet the dems continue to pretend that there is some sort of "compromise" possible with these cretins.

:puke:

[vinessa4freedom]

11. CB's suggestion of making the connection

to corporations is a solid, legitimate and understandable one. Some facts about Social Security like that it isn't in trouble unless we mess with it would help. If we leave it alone, it will be 100% until around 2040 at least, and even then, if we don't do a thing, benefits would only be reduced by approximately 10%.

With privatization, by the time a person in their 20's retires, benefits will have been reduced by 40%. If money is diverted to invest in private accounts now, those immediately retiring will have to have benefits supplimented which means borrowing, which puts the debt that would be incurred into the trillions over the next few decades.

Also, the salary cap on SS tax is something like $87,900. Which means of that 2 million Cheney got from Halliburton last year, he only paid social security tax less than 1/20th of it. That is the solution. Raise the cap.

I know all of you know this already, but I'm fuming about what * is trying to do to the Americans he keeps telling God to bless. :grr:

[politicasista]

13. Kick!

:kick: :kick:

[karynnj]

15. Where is the logic?

The private pension system is in grave trouble, so we fix it by damaging social security. Won't the loss of pensions, only make Social Security more neccesary?