Obama Jabs McCain Over Private Social Security Accounts

[tekisui]

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/19/obama-jabs-mccain-over-private-social-security-accounts/

Barack Obama pointed to stock market volatility on Friday to pour cold water on a popular conservative proposal: private Social Security accounts.

“Imagine if you had some of your Social Security money in the stock market right now,” Obama told 8,000 supporters during a rally at the University of Miami, as he laid into President George W. Bush’s proposal to privatize Social Security.

The president had campaigned aggressively for allowing younger workers to invest a greater share of their Social Security benefits in the stock market in the 2004 campaign, but his effort fell short despite his re-election. That policy defeat emboldened Democrats, who have criticized the issue at times on the stump during the current campaign. But the lurches on Wall Street this week have given new urgency to the argument.

The Obama campaign on Friday was pointing to an Associated Press article that illustrated how the issue was quickly becoming a political minefield for Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who has supported privatization in the past.

“We have to have some straight talk for America. The Social Security system is going to go broke…and we have to fix it, and we have to do it in a bipartisan fashion,” the Republican nominee told a Michigan town hall on Wednesday, according to the AP.

McCain strategist Steve Schmidt on Thursday pushed back against suggestions that McCain favored privatization of the entire government pensions. “What people talk about with regard to personal accounts is giving the American people an ability to have a greater return on an investment — it could be bond funds, for example,” he said.

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[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. YES! Begala was talking about this yesterday and it needs to be said. Our 401 K plummeted in value

[Cirque du So-What]

2. Shout it from the rooftops!

Some of us have seen railing against this shell game back when Chimpolini was pimping for Wall Street, and we're certainly not going to relent now that McAnus has called for SS privatization. Now that an economic meltdown is in progress, I hope Barack Obama and Democratic surrogates pound this message until it seeps the consciousness of even the most low-information of voters.