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Brian Higgins on Social Security Democratic Representative (NY-27)

Bush raided the Social Security trust fund for tax cuts

Create Retirement Savings Accounts.

Balance America’s Commitments to the Young and the Old
An ever-growing share of the federal budget today consists of automatic transfers from working Americans to retirees. Moreover, the costs of the big entitlements for the elderly -- Social Security and Medicare -- are growing at rates that will eventually bankrupt them and that could leave little to pay for everything else government does. We can’t just spend our way out of the problem; we must find a way to contain future costs. The federal government already spends seven times as much on the elderly as it does on children. To allow that ratio to grow even more imbalanced would be grossly unfair to today’s workers and future generations. In addition, Social Security and Medicare need to be modernized to reflect conditions not envisioned when they were created in the 1930s and the 1960s. Social Security, for example, needs a stronger basic benefit to bolster its critical role in reducing poverty in old age. Medicare needs to offer retirees more choices and a modern benefit package that includes prescription drugs. Such changes, however, will only add to the cost of the programs unless they are accompanied by structural reforms that restrain their growth and limit their claim on the working families whose taxes support the programs.

Goals for 2010
• Honor our commitment to seniors by ensuring the future solvency of Social Security and Medicare.
• Make structural reforms in Social Security and Medicare that slow their future cost growth, modernize benefits (including a prescription drug benefit for Medicare), and give beneficiaries more choice and control over their retirement and health security.
• Create Retirement Savings Accounts to enable low-income Americans to save for their own retirement.

No severe changes; no privatization.

RESOLUTION Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives against severe changes to Social Security.
• Whereas Social Security's essential protections for workers and their families cannot be matched by private savings, which are a complement to, but not a substitute for, Social Security's guaranteed benefits;
• Whereas, as one such protection, Social Security provides a guaranteed benefit that one can never outlive, and unlike private savings or investments, is not subject to the ups and downs of the stock market;
• Whereas, for 75 years, Social Security has never been a day late or a dollar short;
• Whereas the American people made clear in 2005 that they did not seek severe change in Social Security when they resoundingly rejected President Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security;
• Whereas the current minority party plan for Social Security is even more extreme than the plan they advanced in 2005:
  1. it cuts guaranteed retirement and survivor benefits for all workers, whether or not they wish to have a private account;
  2. it diverts trillions from the Trust Fund into private accounts;
  3. it increases Federal borrowing by $4,100,000,000,000; and
  4. it subjects workers' basic retirement security to market volatility and the risk of losses; and
• Whereas privatizing Social Security means benefit cuts, diversion of Trust Fund resources, subjecting individuals to market risk and losses, and increasing Federal borrowing by trillions of dollars:
• Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Congress should stand with the American people to reject severe changes to Social Security, including any and all attempts to privatize Social Security, and instead should commit to work bipartisanly to make common-sense adjustments to Social Security to strengthen it for future generations while preserving its guarantees of secure income and family protection in the event of a worker's death, retirement, or severe disability.

Reject privatization; don't raise the retirement age.

Some 200 Democratic House and Senate candidates have signed on to a pledge rejecting any effort to privatize or scale back Social Security benefits or raise the retirement age. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee sponsored this pledge among Congressional candidates.