Tell Senate Finance Committee: STOP Privatization

Tell Senate Finance Committee Members: Don’t Privatize Social Security

Capitol Hill debate on Social Security privatization begins Tuesday, April 26 in the Senate Finance Committee. Please take a moment now to urge your senator who sits on that committee to attend the hearing, ask the hard questions about what Social Security privatization really would do to working people and oppose this attack on America’s most successful family protection program.

Sample Letter for Campaign

Subject: Finance Committee Hearing: STOP Privatization

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

When the Senate Finance Committee begins congressional hearings on Social Security privatization April 26, I urge you to be there to ask the hard questions on behalf of working families like mine. If the committee's witnesses are objective, you will hear that privatizing Social Security would:

* Slash guaranteed benefits. * Explode the federal deficit. * Weaken Social Security's solvency. * Open Social Security up to fraud and corruption. * And make our retirements less secure.

You can help stop it--and I am counting on you to do so.

I urge you to oppose Social Security privatization and protect the retirement security of your constituents and all of America's working families.

Poll after poll shows the American public does not want Social Security privatized. Our retirement security and Social Security's guaranteed benefits for survivors and people with disabilities are just too important to risk.

I know you are under great pressure from the White House and strong investment industry lobbying groups. But the people who elected you and count on you to represent our best interests want you to work hard to stop Social Security privatization.

On the Senate Finance Committee, please protect our retirement security from the huge cuts in guaranteed benefits and massive growth in the federal deficit Social Security privatization would require.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
April 22, 2005


Background Information

Don't Privatize Social Security—Strengthen It.

With private pensions and public employee retirement plans under attack, working families need more retirement security, not less. But privatizing Social Security would make retirement less secure by cutting guaranteed benefits by 30 percent for even for those who do not choose privatized accounts.

 

·        For workers who do choose to have privatized accounts, the government would take back 50 cents for every $1 in an account—on top of the 30 percent cut in guaranteed benefits.

·        For the average worker who lives 20 years beyond retirement, that’s a $152,000 cut in guaranteed benefits. Privatization would push many more seniors into poverty.

·        Privatization would hurt the economy and explode the deficit, passing on $2 trillion in debt to our children during the first decade alone. Most of that money would be borrowed from foreign bankers in China and Japan.

·        Privatization would open Social Security up to corruption, waste and Enron-ization because politicians would hand-pick which Wall Street investment companies could make billions off our privatized accounts. Decisions about Americans’ retirement security should be based on what’s best for average people, not tied to politicians’ wealthy friends or companies that have political influence.

·        We must strengthen Social Security—but we must take the time to do it right so we help rather than hurt working families. We should be talking about commonsense fixes for Social Security rather than slashing benefits.  First, we must insist that the government pay back money that’s been borrowed from the Social Security trust fund. We also could end the “wealthy wage exemption” so CEOs pay the same Social Security taxes on their incomes as average working people pay on theirs. We could roll back President Bush’s most excessive tax breaks for the very wealthy. And we can help working families build private pensions and savings on top of guaranteed Social Security.